The four men; a farrago

NELSON

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THE FOUR MEN

THE FOUR MEN

A FARRAGO

BY

H. BELLOG

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The Southern Hills and the South Sea

They blow such gladness into me,

That when I get to Burton Sands

And smell the smell of the Home Lands,

My heart is all renewed and fills

With the Sovihern Sea and the South Hills.

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fet

Bn& 3 will eing (Sol s ier !

THOMAS NELSON AND SONS
LONDON, EDINBURGH, DUBLIN
NEW YORK, PARIS, AND LEIPZIG

TO

Mrs. WRIGHT-BIDDULPH

OP BUETON IN THE COUNTY OF SUSSEX, UNDER

WHOSE ROOF SO MUCH OF THIS

BOOK WAS WRITTEN

I

^^

PREFACE

My County, it has been proved in the life of
every man that though his loves are human,
and therefore changeable, yet in proportion as
he attaches them to things unchangeable, so
they mature and broaden.

On this account, Dear Sussex, are those
women chiefly dear to men who, as the seasons
pass, do but continue to be more and more
themselves, attain balance, and abandon or
forget vicissitude. And on this account,
Sussex, does a man love an old house,
which was his father's, and on this account
does a man come to love with all his heart,
that part of earth which nourished his boy-
hood. For it does not change, or if it changes,

viii PREFACE

it changes very little, and he finds in it the
character of enduring things.

In this love he remains content until, per-
haps, some sort of warning reaches him, that
even his own County is approaching its doom.
Then, believe me, Sussex, he is anxious in a
very different way; he would, if he could,
preserve his land in the flesh, and keep it
there as it is, forever. But since he knows
he cannot do that, ** at least," he says, " I
will keep her image, and that shall remain."
And as a man will paint with a peculiar passion
a face which he is only permitted to see for a
little time, so will one passionately set down
one's own horizon and one's fields before they
are forgotten and have become a different
thing. Therefore it is that I have put down
in writing what happened to me now so many
years ago, when I met first one man and then
another, and we four bound ourselves together
and walked through all your land, Sussex,
from end to end. For many years I have
meant to write it down and have not; nor
would I write it down now, or issue this
book at all, Sussex, did I not know that

PREFACE

IX

you, who must like all created things decay,
might with the rest of us be very near your
ending. For I know very well in my mind
that a day will come when the holy place
shall perish and all the people of it and never
more be what they were. But before that
day comes, Sussex, may your earth cover me,
and may some loud-voiced priest from Arundel,
or Grinstead, or Crawley, or Storrington, but
best of all from home, have sung Do Mi Fa
Sol above my bones.

t

o

2

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3

2
UL

THE TWENTY-NINTH OF
OCTOBER 1902

THE FOUR MEN

THE TWENTY -NINTH OF OCTOBER

1902

Nine years ago, as I was sitting in the
" George " at Robertsbridge, drinking that
port of theirs and staring at the fire, there
arose in me a multitude of thoughts through
which at last came floating a vision of the
woods of home and of another place — the lake
where the Arun rises.

And I said to myself, inside my own mind :

" What are you doing ? You are upon

some business that takes you far, not even

4 THE BEGINNING

for ambition or for adventure, but only to
earn. And you will cross the sea and earn
your money, and you will come back and
spend more than you have earned. But all
the while your life runs past you like a river,
and the things that are of moment to men
you do not heed at all."

As I thought this kind of thing and still
drank up that port, the woods that overhang
the reaches of my river came back to me so
clearly that for the sake of them, and to
enjoy their beauty, I put my hand in front of
my eyes, and I saw with every delicate appeal
that one's own woods can offer, the steep
bank over Stoke, the valley, the high ridge
which hides a man from Arundel, and Arun
turning and hurrying below. I smelt the
tide.

Not ever, in a better time, when I had
seen it of reality and before my own eyes
living, had that good picture stood so plain ;
and even the colours of it were more vivid
than they commonly are in our English air ;
but because it was a vision there was no
sound, nor could I even hear the rustling of

(1,655)

OF THE JOURNEY 5

the leaves, though I saw the breeze gusty on
the water-meadow banks, and ruffling up a
force against the stream.

Then I said to myself again :

" What you are doing is not worth while,
and nothing is worth while on this unhappy
earth except the fulfilment of a man's desire.
Consider how many years it is since you saw
your home, and for how short a time, perhaps,
its perfection will remain. Get up and go
back to your own place if only for one day ;
for you have this great chance that you are
already upon the soil of your own county,
and that Kent is a mile or two behind."

As I said these things to myself I felt as
that man felt of whom everybody has read in
Homer with an answering heart: that "he
longed as he journeyed to see once more the
smoke going up from his own land, and after
that to die."

Then I hit the table there with my hand,
and as though there were no duty nor no
engagements in the world, and I spoke out
loud (for I thought myself alone). I said •

" I will go from this place to my home."

(1,655) B

6 I MEET

When I had said this the deeper voice of
an older man answered :

" And since I am going to that same place,
let us journey there together."

I turned round, and I was angry, for there
had been no one with me when I had entered
upon this reverie, and I had thought myself
alone.

I saw then, sitting beyond the table, a tall
man and spare, well on in years, vigorous ;
his eyes were deep set in his head; they
were full of travel and of sadness; his hair
was of the colour of steel ; it was curled and
plentiful, and on his chin was a strong, full
beard, as grey and stiff as the hair of his
head.

"I did not know that you were here," I
said, "nor do I know how you came in,
nor who you are; but if you wish to
know what it was made me speak aloud
although I thought myself alone, it was the
memory of this county, on the edge of
which I happen now to be by accident for
one short hour, till a train shall take me out
of it."

WITH GRIZZLEBEARD 7

Then he answered, in the same grave way
that he had spoken before :

*' For the matter of that it is my county
also — and I heard you say more than that."

" Yes, I said more than that, and since you
heard me you know what I said. I said that
all the world could be thrown over but that I
would see my own land again, and tread my
own county from here and from now, and
since you have asked me what part especially,
I will tell you. My part of Sussex is all that
part from the valley of Arun, and up the
Western Rother too, and so over the steep
of the Downs to the Norewood, and the
lonely place called No Man's Land."

He said to me, nodding slowly :

" I know these also," and then he went on.
"A man is more himself if he is one of a
number ; so let us take that road together,
and, as we go, gather what company we can
find."

I was willing enough, for all companionship
is good, but chance companionship is the best
of all ; but I said to him, first :

" If we are to be together for three days or

8 THE BAPTIZING OF

four (since it will take us that at least to
measure the whole length of Sussex), tell me
your name, and I will tell you mine."

He put on the little smile which is worn by
men who have talked to very many different
kinds of their fellows, and he said :

" My name is of a sort that tells very little,
and if I told it it would not be worth telling.
What is your name ? "

" My name," I said to him, " is of import-
ance only to those who need to know it ; it
might be of importance to my masters had I
such, but I have none. It is not of import-
ance to my equals. And since you will not
tell me yours, and we must call each other
something, I shall call you Grizzlebeard,
which fixes you very well in my mind."

"And what shall I call you," he said,
*' during so short a journey ? "

"You may call me Myself," I answered,
" for that is the name I shall give to my own
person and my own soul, as you will find
when I first begin speaking of them as occa-
sion serves."

It was agreed thus between us that we

MYSELF AND GRIZZLEBEARD 9

should walk through the whole county to the
place we knew, and recover, while yet they
could be recovered, the principal joys of the
soul, and gather, if we could gather it, some
further company ; and it was agreed that, as
our friendship was chance, so chance it should
remain, and that these foolish titles should be
enough for us to know each other by.

When, therefore, we had made a kind of
pact (but not before) I poured out a great
deal of my port for him into a silver mug
which he habitually kept in his pocket, and
drinking the rest from my own glass, agreed
with him that we would start the next day at
dawn, with our faces westward along the
Brightling road — that is, up into the woods
and to the high sandy land from which first, a
long way off, one sees the Downs.

All this was on the evening of the 29th
October in the year 1902 ; the air was sharp,
but not frosty, and, outside, drove the last
clouds of what had been for three days a
great gale.

Next morning, having slept profoundly,
without giving a warning to any one who had

10

WE DETERMINE

engaged us or whom we had engaged, but
cutting ourselves quite apart from care and
from the world, we set out with our faces
westward, to reach at last the valley of the
Arun and the things we knew.

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THE THIRTIETH OF
OCTOBER 1902

THE THIRTIETH OF OCTOBER

1902

There was still wind in the sky, and clouds
shaped to it, and driving before it in the cold
morning as we went up the lane by Scalands
Gate and between the leafless woods ; and
still the road rose until we came to Brightling
village, and there we thought that we would
step into the inn and breakfast, for we had
walked four miles, and all that way up hill we
had hardly said a word one to the other.

But when we were come into the inn we
found there a very jovial fellow with a sort of
ready smile behind his face, and eyes that
were direct and keen. But these eyes of his

14 WE MEET

were veiled with the salt of the sea, and paler
than the eyes of a landsman would have been ;
for by the swing of his body as he sat there,
and the ease of his limbs, he was a sailor. So
much was very clear. Moreover, he had a
sailor's cap on with a shiny peak, and his
clothes were of the sailor's cut, and his
boots were not laced but were pulled on,
and showed no divisions anywhere.

As we came in we greeted this man and he
us. He asked us whence we had come ; we
said from Robertsbridge ; he told us that for
his part he had slept that night in the inn,
and when he had had breakfast he was setting
out again, and he asked us whither we were
going. Then I said to him :

"This older man and I have inclined our-
selves to walk westward with no plan, until
we come to the better parts of the county,
that is, to Arun and to the land I know."

The Sailor. " Why, that will suit me very
well."

Grizzlebeard. " How do you mean that
will suit you very well ? "

The Sailor. "Why, I mean that it is my

THE SAILOR 15

intention also to walk westward, for I have
money in my pocket, and I think it will last
a few days."

Myself. " Doubtless you have a ship in
Portsmouth or in Southampton, which, if
you come with us, you will join ? "

The Sailor. " No, nor in Bosham either, of
which the song says, * Bosham that is by
Selsea.' There is no little ship waiting for
me in Bosham harbour, but I shall fall upon
my feet. So have I lived since I began this
sort of life, and so I mean to end it."

Grizzlebeard. " It will not end as you
choose."

When I had asked for breakfast for us two
as well as for him, I said to the Sailor, " If
you are to walk with us, by what name shall
we call you ? "

" Why that," said the Sailor, '* will depend
upon what name you bear yourselves."

"Why," said I, "this older man here is
called Grizzlebeard. It is not his family's
name, but his own, and .as for myself, my
name is Myself, and a good name too — the
dearest sounding name in all the world."

16 WE MEET

" Very well," said the Sailor, pulling his
chair up to the table and pouring himself out
a huge great bowl of tea, "then you may
call me Sailor, which is the best name in the
world, and suits me well enough I think, for
I believe myself to be the master sailor of
all sailors, and I have sailed upon all the
seas of the world."

Grizzlebeard. " I see that you will make
a good companion."

The Sailor. " Yes, for as long as I choose ;
but you must not be surprised if I go off
by this road or by that at any hour, without
your leave or any other man's ; for so long as
I have money in my pocket I am determined
to see the world."

Myself. " We are well met, Sailor, you and
Grizzlebeard and I in this parish of Bright-
ling, which, though it lies so far from the
most and the best of our county, is in a way
a shrine of it."

Chizzlebeard. " This I never heard of
Brightling, but of Hurstmonceaux."

Myself. " There may be shrines and shrines
on any land, and sanctities of many kinds.

THE SAILOR 17

For you will notice, Grizzlebeard, or rather
you should have noticed already, having lived
so long, that good things do not jostle."

The Sailor. " But why do you say this of
Brightling ? Is it perhaps because of these
great folds of woods which are now open to
the autumn and make a harp to catch the
wind ? Certainly if I'd woken here from
illness or long sleep I should know by the
air and by the trees in what land I was."

Grizzlebeard. "No, he was thinking of
the obelisk which draws eyes to itself from
Sussex all around."

Myself. "I was thinking of something far
more worthy, and of the soul of a man.
For do you not note the sign of this inn
by which it is known?"

The Sailor. "Why, it is called * The
Fuller's Arms ' ; there being so many sheep
I take it, and therefore so much wool and
therefore fulling."

Myself. "No, it is not called so for such
a reason, but after the arms or the name of
one Fuller, a squire of these parts, who had
in him the Sussex heart and blood, as had

18 SQUIRE FULLER

Earl Godwin and others famous in history.
And indeed this man Fuller deserves to be
famous and to be called, so to speak, the
very demigod of my county, for he spent
all his money in a roaring way, and lived
in his time like an immortal being conscious
of what was worth man's while during his
little passage through the daylight. I have
heard it said that Fuller of Brightling, being
made a Knight of the Shire for the County
of Sussex in the time when King George
the Third was upon the throne, had himself
drawn to Westminster in a noble great
coach, with six huge, hefty, and determined
horses to draw it, but these were not of
the Sussex breed, for there is none. And

he "

Grizzlebeard. "You say right that they
were not ' Sussex horses,' for there are only
two things in Sussex which Sussex deigns
to give its name to, and the first is the
spaniel, and the second is the sheep. Note
you, many kingdoms and counties and lands
are prodigal of their names, because their
names are of little account and in no way

OF BRIGHTLING 19

sacred, so that one will give its name to a
cheese and another to a horse, and another
to some kind of ironwork or other, and
another to clotted cream or to butter, and
another to something ridiculous, as to a cat
with no tail. But it is not so with Sussex,
for our name is not a name to be used Uke
a label and tied on to common things, seeing
that we were the first place to be created
when the world was made, and we shall
certainly be the last to remain, regal and
at ease when all the rest is very miserably
perishing on the Day of Judgment by a
horrible great rain of fire from Heaven.
Which will fall, if I am not mistaken, upon
the whole earth, and strike all round the
edges of the county, consuming Tonbridge,
and Appledore (but not Rye), and Horley,
and Ockley, and Hazelmere, and very cer-
tainly Petersfield and Havant, and there
shall be an especial woe for Hayling Island ;
but not one hair of the head of Sussex shall
be singed, it has been so ordained from the
beginning, and that in spite of Burwash and
those who dwell therein."

20 SQUIRE FULLER

Myself. "Now you have stopped me ii
the midst of what I was saying about Fuller,
that noble great man sprung from this noble
great land."

The Sailor. "You left him going up to
Westminster in a coach with six great horses,
to sit in Parliament and be a Knight of the
Shire."

Myself. "That is so, and, God willing, as
he went he sang the song ' Golier 1 Golier I '
and I make little doubt that until he came
to the Marches of the county, and entered
the barbarous places outside, great crowds
gathered at his passage and cheered him as
such a man should be cheered, for he was a
most noble man, and very free with all good
things. Nor did he know what lay before
him, having knowledge of nothing so evil as
Westminster, nor of anything so stuffy or so
vile as her most detestable Commons House,
where men sit palsied and glower, hating
each other and themselves : but he knew
nothing yet except broad Sussex.

" Well then, when he had come to West-
minster, very soon there was a day in which

*y

OF BRIGHTLING 21

the Big-wigs would have a debate, all empty
and worthless, upon Hot Air, or the value
of nothingness ; and the man who took most
money there out of the taxes, and his first
cousin who sat opposite and to whom he
had promised the next wad of public wealth,
and his brother-in-law and his parasite and
all the rest of the thieves had begun their
pompous folly, when great Fuller arose in
his place, full of the South, and said that
he had not come to the Commons House
to talk any such balderdash, or to hear it,
but contrariwise proposed, then and there,
to give them an Eulogy upon the County of
Sussex, from which he had come and which
was the captain ground and head county of
the whole world.

" This Eulogy he very promptly and power-
fully began, using his voice as a healthy
man should, who will drown all opposition
and who can call a dog to heel from half a
mile away. And indeed though a storm rose
round him from all those lesser men, who
had come to Westminster, not for the praise
or honour of their land, but to fill their

(1,655> „

22 SQUIRE FULLER

pockets, he very manfully shouted and was
heard above it all, so that the Sergeant-at-
Arms grew sick with fear, and the Clerk at
the Table wished he had never been born.
But the Speaker, whose business it is to keep
the place inane (I do not remember his name,
for such men are not famous after death),
stood up in his gown and called to Fuller
that he was out of order. And since FuUei
would not yield, every man in the House
called out * Order ! ' eight or nine hundred
times. But when they were exhausted, the
great Fuller, Fuller of Brightling, cried out
over them all :

" ' Do you think I care for you, you
insignificant little man in the wig? Take
that!' And with these words he snapped
his fingers in the face of the bunch of them,
and walked out of the Commons House, and
got into his great coach with its six powerful
horses, and ordering their heads to be set
southwards he at last regained his own land,
where he was received as such a man should
be, with bells ringing and guns firing, little
boys cheering, and all ducks, hens, and

OF BRIGHTLING 28

pigs flying from before his approach to the
left and to the right of the road. Ever
since that day it has been held a singular
honour and one surpassing all others to be
a squire of Brightling, but no honour what-
soever to be a member of the Commons
House. He spent all his great fortune upon
the poor of Sussex and of his own parish,
bidding them drink deep and eat hearty as
being habits the best preservative of life,
until at last he also died. There is the
story of FuUer of Brightling, and may we
all deserve as well as he."

The Sailor. " The great length of your
story, Myself, has enabled me to make a
very excellent breakfast, for which I shall
pay, bidding you and Grizzlebeard pay each
for your own, as is the custom of the parish
where I was born, and one 1 hope you wiU
admire while I still have cash, but forget
when I have spent it. And if in talking so
much you have eaten little, I cannot help it,
but I must take the road."

So saying the Sailor rose up and wiped
his lips very carefully with his napkin, and

24 WE MEET WITH

put down a sum of money upon which he
had agreed with the landlord, and we also
paid for ourselves, and then we all three set
out under the high morning for Heathfield,
and were ready to talk of Jack Cade (who
very nearly did for the rich, but who most
unfortunately came by a knock on the head
in these parts), when we perceived upon the
road before us a lanky fellow, moving along
in a manner quite particular to men of
one sort throughout the world, men whose
thoughts are always wool-gathering, and who
seem to have no purpose, and yet in some
way are by the charity of their fellows kept
fed and clothed.

"Mark you that man." said Grizzlebeard,
" for I think we can make him of our company,
and if I am not mistaken he shall add to it
what you (speaking to the Sailor) and Myself
there, and I also lack. For this morning has
proved us all three to be cautious folk, men
of close speech and affectation, knaves know-
ing well our way about the world, and careful
not to give away so much as our own names :
skinflints paying each his own shot, and in

THE POET 25

many other ways fellows devoted to the Devil.
But this man before us, if I mistake not, is of
a kind much nearer God."

As Grizzlebeard said this, we watched the
man before us more closely, and we saw that
as he walked his long Hmbs seemed to have
loose joints, his arms dangled rather than
swang, he steered no very straight course along
the road, and under his felt hat with its narrow
brim there hung tawny hair much too long,
and in no way vigorous. His shirt was soft,
grey and dirty, and of wool, and his collar made
one with it, the roll of which just peeped
above his throat, and his coat was of velveteen,
like a keeper's, but he was not like a keeper
in any other way, and no one would have
trusted him with a gun.

" Who knows but this thing may be an
artist ? " said the Sailor in an awed voice to
me, as we came nearer.

Myself'. " I do not think so. An artist would
not be so nonchalant. Even in youth their
debts oppress them, and they make certain
fixed and firm gestures, for they are men that
work with their hands. But this thing is

26 WE MEET WITH

loose hung, and though I will make certain
he has debts, I will be certain also that he
cares nothing for them, and could not tell you
their amount to within half of the true total."

By this time, since we walked steadily, and
he shambling, as I have said, we had nearly
come up with him, and we heard him crooning
to himself in a way that might have irritated
any weary listener, for the notes of his hum-
ming were not distinct at all, and he seemed
to care little where the tune began or ended.
Then we saw him stop suddenly, pull a pencil
out of some pocket or other, and feel about in
several more for paper as we supposed.

" I am right," said Grizzlebeard in triumph.
" He is a Poet ! "

Hearing our voices for the first time the
youth turned slowly round, and when we saw
his eyes we knew indeed that Grizzlebeard
was right. His eyes were arched and large
as though in a perpetual surprise, and they
were of a warm grey colour. They did not
seem to see the things before them, but other
things beyond ; and while the rest of his
expression changed a little to greet us, his

THE POET 27

eyes did not change. Moreover they seemed
continually sad.

Before any of us could address this young
man, he asked suddenly for a knife.

" Do you think it safe to let him have one ? "
said the Sailor to me.

" It is to sharpen this pencil with," said the
stranger, putting forth a stub of an H.B.
much shorter than his thumb. He held it
forward rather pitifully and uncertainly, with
its blunt, broken point upwards.

"You had better take this," said Grizzle-
beard, handing him a pencil in better condi-
tion. '* Have you no knife of your own ? "

" I have lost it," said the other sadly. His
voice was mournful as he said it, so I suppose
it had been his friend.

G^izzlebeard. " Well, take mine and write
down quickly what you had to write, for such
things I know by my own experience to be
fugitive."

The stranger looked at him a moment and
then said :

" I have forgotten what I was going to say
... I mean, to write."

28 WE MEET WITH

The Sailor (with a groan). " He has for-
gotten his own name I " ( Then more loudly),
" Poet I Let us call you Poet, and come your
way with us. We will look after you, and in
return you shall write us verse: bad verse,
oughly verse into which a man may get his
teeth. Not sloppy verse, not wasty, pappy
verse ; not verse blanchified, but strong, heavy,
brown, bad verse; made up and knotty; twisted
verse of the fools. Such verse as versifiers
write when they are moved to versifying by
the deeper passions of other men, having
themselves no facilities with the Muse."

The Poet. " I do not understand you."

But Grizzlebeard took his arm affec-
tionately, as though he were his father, and
said, "Come, these men are good-natured
enough, but they have just had breakfast, and
it is not yet noon, so they are in a hunting
mood, and for lack of quarry hunt you. But
you shall not reply to them. Only come
westward with us and be our companion until
we get to the place where the sun goes down,
and discover what makes it so glorious."

On hearing this the Poet was very pleased.

THE POET 29

He had long desired to find that place, and
said that he had been walking towards it all
his life. But he confessed to us a little shame-
facedly that he had no money, except three
shillings and a French penny, which last some
one had given him out of charity, taking him
for a beggar a little way out of Brightling
that very day.

" If, however," he said, " you are prepared
to pay for me in all things no matter what I
eat or drink or read or in any other way dis-
port myself, why, I shall be very glad to drive
that bargain with you."

Myself. " Poet ! That shall be understood
between us 1 And you shall order what you
will. You shall not feel constrained. It is
in the essence of good fellowship that the
poor man should call for the wine, and the
rich man should pay for it."

" I am not a poor man," said the Poet in
answer to me gently, " only I have forgotten
where I left my money. I know I had three
pounds yesterday, but I think I paid a sove-
reign for a shilling beyond Brede, and, in
Battle (it must have been) I forgot to pick

80 WE COME

up my change. As for the third pound it
may turn up, but I have looked for it several
times this morning, and I am beginning to
fear that it is gone. . . . Now I remember it I "

The Sailor. " What ? More luck ? Be cer-
tain of this much I We will not turn back-
wards for your one pound or for five of them."

The Poet. "No, not that. When I said
* I remember,' I meant something else. I
meant the line I had in my head as you came
along and changed my thoughts."

The Sailor. " I do not want to hear it."

The Poet. "It was,

' I wonder if these little pointed hills ' . . ."

Grizzlebeard. " Yes, and what afterwards ? "

l^he Poet {a little pained). " Nothing, I am

afraid." He waved his hands limply towards

the north. " But you will perceive that the

little hills are pointed hereabouts."

The Sailor. " I never yet thanked my
parents for anything in my life, but now I
thank them for that which hitherto has most
distressed me, that they set me to the hard
calling of the sea. For if I had not been

TO HEATHFIELD 31

apprenticed, Bristol fashion, when I was a child
to a surly beast from Holderness, I might have
been a Poet, by the wrath of God."

Grizzlebeard. " Do not listen to him, Poet,
but see ! We have come into Heathfield.
I think it is time either to eat or drink or
do both, and to consider our companionship
joined, and the first stage of our journey
toward the West accomplished."

Now in those days Heathfield was a good
place for men, and will be again, for this
land of Sussex orders all things towards itself,
and will never long permit any degradation.

So we sat down outside the village at the
edge of a little copse, which was part of a
rich man's park, and we looked northward
to the hill of Mayfield, where St. Dunstan
pulled the Devil by the nose ; and they
keep the tongs wherewith he did it in May-
field to this day.

Now as the story of the way St. Dunstan
pulled the Devil by the nose has, in the
long process of a thousand years, grown
corrupt, distorted, and very unworthily
changed from its true original, and as it

32 STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN

is a matter which every child should know
and every grown man remember for the
glory of religion and to the honour of this
ancient land, I will set it down here before
I forget it, and you shall read it or no,
precisely as you choose.

St. Dunstan, then, who was a Sussex man
(for he was born a little this side of Ardingly,
whatever false chroniclers may say against it,
and was the son of Mr. Dunstan of the
Leas, a very honest man), St. Dunstan, I
say, having taken orders, which was his own
look out, and no business of ours, very rapidly
rose from sub-deacon to deacon, and from
deacon to priest, and from priest to bishop,
and would very certainly have risen to be
pope in due time, had he not wisely pre-
ferred to live in this dear county of his instead
of wasting himself on foreigners.

Of the many things he did I have no
space to tell you (and as it is, my story is
getting longer than I like — but no matter),
but one chief thing he did, memorable beyond
all others. Yes, more memorable even than
the miracle whereby he caused a number of

STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN 33

laymen to fall, to his vast amusement but to
their discomfiture, through the rotten floor-
ing of a barn. And this memorable thing
was his pulling of the Devil by the nose.

For you must know that the Devil, desir-
ing to do some hurt to the people of Sussex,
went about asking first one man, then another,
who had the right of choice in it, and every
one told him St. Dunstan. For he was their
protector, as they knew, and that was why
they sent the Devil to him, knowing very
well that he would get the better of the
Fiend, whom the men of Sussex properly
defy and harass from that day to this, as
you shall often find in the pages of this
book.

So the Devil went up into the Weald of
a May morning when everything was pleasant
to the eye and to the ear, and he found St.
Dunstan sitting in Cuckfield at a table in
the open air, and writing verse in Latin,
which he very well knew how to do. Then
said the Devil to St. Dunstan : " I have
come to give you your choice how Sussex
shall be destroyed, for you must know that

34 STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN

I have the power and the patent to do this
thing, and there is no gainsaying me, only
it is granted to your people to know the
way by which they should perish."

And indeed this is the Devil's way, always
to pretend that he is the master, though he
very well knows in his black heart that he
is nothing of the kind.

Now St. Dunstan was not the fool he
looked, in spite of his round face, and round
tonsure, and round eyes, and he would have
his sport with the Devil before he had done
with him, so he answered civilly enough : —

" Why, Devil, I think if we must all pass,
it would be pleasanter to die by way of
sea- water than any other, for out of the sea
came our land, and so into the sea should
it go again. Only I doubt your power to
do it, for we are defended against the sea
by these great hills called The Downs, which
will take a woundy lot of cutting through."

" Pooh 1 bah ! " said the Devil, rudely, in
answer. " You do not know your man ! I
will cut through those little things in a night
and not feel it, seeing I am the father of

STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN 35

contractors and the original master of over-
seers and undertakers of great works: it is
child's-play to me. It is a flea-bite, a summer
night's business between sunset and dawn."

" Why, then," said St. Dunstan, " here is
the sun nearly set over Black Down, west-
ward of us, so go to your work ; but if you
have not done it by the time the cock crows
over the Weald, you shall depart in God's
name."

Then the Devil, full of joy at having
cheated St. Dunstan, as he thought, and
at being thus able to ruin our land, which,
if ever he could accomplish it, would involve
the total destruction and efFacement of the
whole world, flew off through the air south-
wards, flapping his great wings. So that all
the people of the Weald thought it was
an aeroplane, of which instrument they are
delighted observers ; and many came out to
watch him as he flew, and some were ready
to tell others what kind of aeroplane he was,
and such like falsehoods.

But no sooner was it dark than the Devil,
getting a great spade sent him from his

36 STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN

farm, set to work very manfully and strongly,
digging up the Downs from the seaward side.
And the sods flew and the great lumps of
chalk he shovelled out left and right, so that
it was a sight to see; and these falling all
over the place, from the strong throwing of
his spade, tumbled some of them upon Mount
Caburn, and some of them upon Rackham
Hill, and some here and some there, bu
most of them upon Cissbury, and that i
how those great mounds grew up, of which
the learned talk so glibly, although they
know nothing of the matter whatsoever

The Devil dug and the Devil heaved until
it struck midnight in Shoreham Church, and
one o'clock and two o'clock and three o'clock
again. And as he dug his great dyke drove;
deeper and deeper into the Downs, so that it:
was very near coming out on the Wealden
side, and there were not more than two dozen
spits to dig before the sea would come throuqh
and drown us all.

But St. Dunstan (who knew aU this), offer-
ing up the prayer, Populiis Tuus Domine
(which is the prayer of Nov. 8, Pp. alba 42,

STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN 37

Double or quits), by the power of this prayer
caused at that instant all the cocks that are
in the Weald between the Western and the
Eastern Rother, and from Ashdown right
away to Harting Hill, and from Bodiam to
Shillinglee, to wake up suddenly in defence
of the good Christian people, and to haul those
silly red-topped heads of theirs from under
their left wings, and very broadly to crow
altogether in chorus, so that such a noise was
never heard before, nor will be heard thence
afterwards forever ; and you would have
thought it was a Christmas night instead of
the turn of a May morning.

The Devil, then, hearing this terrible great
challenge of crowing from some million throats
for seventy miles one way and twenty miles
the other, stopped his digging in bewilder-
ment, and striking his spade into the ground
he hopped up on to the crest of the hill and
looked in wonderment up the sky and down
the sky over all the stars, wondering how it
could be so near day. But in this foolish action
he lost the time he needed. For even as he
discovered what a cheat had been played upon

(1,665) J)

38 STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN

him, over away beyond Hawkhurst Ridge day
dawned — and with a great howl the Devil was
aware that his wager was lost.

But he was firm on his right (for he loves
strict dealing in oppression) and he flew away
over the air this way and that, to find St.
Dunstan, whom he came upon at last, not in
Cuckfield but in May field. Though how the
Holy Man got there in so short a time 1
cannot tell. It is a mystery worthy of a great
saint.

Anyhow, when the Devil got to Mayfield
he asked where St. Dunstan was, and they
told him he was saying Mass. So the Devil
had to wait, pawing and chawing and whisk-
ing his tail, until St. Dunstan would come
out, which he did very leisurely and smiling,
and asked the Devil how the devil he did,
and why it was he had not finished that task
of his. But the Devil, cutting him short,
said:

" I will have no monkishness, but my
duel"

*' Why, how is that ? " said St. Dunstan in
a pleased surprise.

STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN 39

Then the Devil told him how the cocks
had all begun crowing half-an-hour before the
right time, and had unjustly deprived him of
his reward. For the dyke (he said) was all but
finished, and now stood there nearly through
the Downs. And how it was a burning shame
that such a trick should have been played, and
how he verily believed there had been sharp
practice in the matter, but how, notwithstand-
ing, he would have his rights, for the law was
on his side.

Then St. Dunstan, scratching his chin with
the forefinger of his left hand (which he was
the better able to do, because he had not
shaved that morning), said to the Devil in
answer :

" I perceive that there is here matter for
argument. But do not let us debate it here.
Come rather into my little workshop in the
palace yonder, where I keep all my argu-
ments, and there I will listen to you as your
case deserves."

So they went together towards the little
workshop, St. Dunstan blithely as befits a
holy man, but the Devil very grumpily and

40 STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN

sourly. And there St. Dunstan gave the Devil
a chair, and bade him talk away and present
his case, while he himself would pass the time
away at little tricks of smithying and orna-
mentry, which were his delight. And so
saying, St. Dunstan blew the bellows and
heated the fire of his forge, and put his
enamelling tongs therein, and listened while
the Devil put before him his case, with argu-
ments so cogent, precedents so numerous,
statutes so clear, and order so lucid, as never
yet were heard in any court, and would have
made a lawyer dance for joy. And all the
while St. Dunstan kept nodding gravely and
saying :

" Yes ! Yes I Proceed I . . . But I have
an argument against all of this 1 " Until at
last the Devil, stung by so simple a reply
repeated, said :

** Why, then, let us see your argument I
For there is no argument or plea known or
possible which can defeat my claim, or make
me abandon it or compromise it in ever so
little."

But just as he said this St. Dunstan, pulling

STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN 41

his tongs all hot from the forge fire, cried very
suddenly and loudly :

" Here is my argument ! " And with that
he clapped the pincers sharply upon the Devil's
nose, so that he danced and howled and began
to curse in a very abominable fashion.

" Come, now ! " said St. Dunstan. " Come I
This yowling is no pleading, but blank ribaldry !
Will you not admit this argument of mine, and
so withdraw from this Court non- suited ? "

And as he said this he pulled the Devil
briskly round and round the room, making
him hop over tables and leap over chairs like
a mountebank, and cursing the while with no
set order of demurrer^ replevin, quo warranto,
nisi prius, habeas corpus, and the rest, but
in good round German, which is his native
speech, and all the while St. Dunstan said :

" Argue, brother ! Argue, learned counsel I
Plead I All this is not to the issue before the
Court ! Let it be yes or no I We must have
particulars ! " And as he thus harangued the
Devil in legal fashion, he still pulled him
merrily round and round the room, taking
full sport of him, until, at last, the Devil

42 STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN

could stand no more, and so, when St. Dun-
stan unclappered his cHppers, flew instantly
away.

And that is why the Devil does to this day
feel so extraordinarily tender upon the subject
of his nose ; and in proof of the whole story (if
proof were needed of a matter which is in the
Bollandists, and amply admitted of the Curia,
the Propaganda, and whatever else you will),
in proof of the whole story I say you have : —
Imprimis, the Dyke itself, which is still called
the Devil's Dyke, and which still stands there
very neatly dug, almost to the crossing of the
hills. Secundo, et valde fortior, in Mayfield,
for any one to handle and to see, the very
tongs wherewith the thing was done.

And if you find the story long be certain
that the Devil found it longer, for there is no
tale in the world that can bore a man as fiercely
as can hot iron. So back to Heathfield.

Well, as we sat there in Heathfield, we
debated between ourselves by which way we
should go westward, for all this part of The
County is a Jumbled Land.

THE AWFUL TOWNS 43

First, as in duty bound, we asked the Poet,
because he was the last comer ; and we found
that he could not make up his mind, and when
we pressed him we found further that he did not
know at all by what way a man might go west
from these woods. But when he heard that
if any one should go through Burgess Hill
and Hayward's Heath he would be going
through towns of the London sort, the Poet
said that rather than do that he would leave
our company. For he said that in such towns
the more one worked the less one had, and
that yet, if one did not work at all, one died.
So all he had to say upon the matter was
that whether we avoided such places by the
north or by the south, it was all one to him ;
but avoid them one way or another we must
if we wished him to keep along with us.

When the Poet had thus given his opinion,
Grizzlebeard and 1 next put the question to
the Sailor, who frowned and looked very wise
for a little time, and then, taking out his pencil,
asked the Poet to say again exactly what his
objection was; which, as the Poet gave it
him, he carefully wrote down on a piece of

44 AND HOW TO

paper. And when he had done that, he
very thoughtfully filled his pipe with tobacco,
rolled the paper into a spill, set fire to it, and
with it lit his pipe. When he had done all
these things, he said he did not care how we
went, so only that we got through the bad part
quickly.

He thought we might do it in the darkness.
But I told him that the places would be full
of policemen, who were paid to throw poor
and wandering men into prison, especially by
night. So he gave up the whole business.

Then Grizzlebeard and I discussed how the
thing should be done, and we decided that
there was nothing for it but to go by the
little lanes to Irkfield, particularly remember-
ing " The Black Boy " where these little lanes
began, and then, not sleeping at Irkfield, to
go on through the darkness to Fletching, and
so by more little lanes to Ardingly. In this
way we who knew the county could be rid of
the invaders, and creep round them to the
north until we found ourselves in the forest.

Having thus decided, we set out along that
road in silence, but first we bought cold meat

OUTFLANK THEM 45

and bread to eat upon our way, and when we
came to Irkfield it was evening.

The wind had fallen. We had gone many-
miles that day. We were fatigued ; and nothing
but the fear of what lay before us prevented
our sleeping in the place. For we feared that
if we slept there we should next day shirk the
length of the detour, and see those horrible
places after all. But the Sailor asked sud-
denly what money there was between us.
He himself, he said, had more than one
pound, and he put down on the table of the
inn we halted in a sovereign and some shillings.
I said that I had more than five, which was
true, but I would not show it. Grizzlebeard
said that what money he had was the business
of no one but himself The Poet felt in many
pockets, and made up very much less than
half- a- crown.

Not until all this had been done did the
Sailor tell us that he had hired in that same
house a little two- wheeled cart, with a strong
horse and a driver, and that, for a very large
sum, we might be driven all those miles through
the night to Ardingly, and to the edge of the

46 WE FIND THE FOREST

high woods, and that for his part we might
come with him or not, but he would certainly
drive fast through the darkness, and not sleep
until he was on the forest ridge, and out of
all this detestable part of the county, which
was not made for men, but rather for tourists
or foreigners, or I^ondon people that had lost
their way.

So we climbed into his cart, and we were
driven through the night by cross roads, pass-
ing no village except Fletching, until, quite at
midnight, we were on the edge of the high
woods, and there the driver was paid so much
that he could put up and pass the night, but
for our part we went on into the trees, led by
the Sailor, who said he knew more of these
woods than any other man.

Therefore we followed him patiently, though
how he should know these woods or when he
had first come upon them he would not tell.

We went through the dark trees by a long
green ride, climbing the gate that a rich man
had put up and locked, and passing deeper
and deeper into the wild, and in the little that
we said to each other, Grizzlebeard, the Sailor

WE REACH THE HUT 47

and I, we hoped for rest very soon ; but the
Sailor went on before, knowing his way like a
hound, and turning down this path and that
until we came suddenly to a blot in the
darkness, and a square of black stretching
across the trees from side to side. It was a
little hut.

The Sailor first tried the door, then, finding
it locked, he pulled a key from his pocket and
entered, and when he had got inside out of
the breeze, he struck a match and lit a candle
that was there, standing on a copper stick,
and we all came in and looked around.

It was one room, and a small one, of
weather boarding on all the four sides. There
were two small windows, which were black in
the candle light, and on the side to the right
of the door a great fireplace of brick, with
ashes in it and small wood and logs laid, and
near this fireplace was a benched ingle-nook,
and there were two rugs there. But for these
things there was nothing in the hut whatso-
ever, no book or furniture at all, except the
candlestick, and the floor was of beaten
earth.

48 THE FIRE

"Sailor," said I, "how did you come to
have the key of this place ? "

It was wonderful enough that he should
have known his way to it. But the Sailor
said :

" Why not ? " and after that would tell us
no more. Only he said before we slept, late
as it was, we would do well to light the fire,
and put upon it two or three more of the
great logs that stood by, since, in the autumn
cold, we none of us should sleep however
much we wrapped our cloaks about our
feet, unless we had our feet to a blaze.
And in this he was quite right, for no
matter what the weather, and even out in
the open, men can always sleep if they have
a fire. So we made an agreement between
us that Grizzlebeard, being an old man, was
to have the bench and the rugs, but that we
three were to stretch ourselves before the
fire, when it should be lit; and, talking so
and still wideawake, we struck matches and
tried to coax the flame.

But at first, on account of the wind without,
it lit badly, and the small wood was damp

THE WORST THING 49

and smoked, and the smoke blew into our
faces and into the room; and the Sailor,
shielding it with his coat and trying to get
a draught in that great chimney-place, said
that a smoking chimney was a cursed thing.

" It is the worst thing in the world," said
the Poet peevishly; to which the Sailor
answered :

"Nonsense! Death is the worst thing in
the world."

But Grizzlebeard, from where he lay on the
broad bench with rugs about him, and his
head resting on his hand, denied this too,
speaking in a deep voice with wisdom. " You
are neither of you right," he said. "The
worst thing in the world is the passing of
human affection. No man who has lost a
friend need fear death," he said.

The Sailor. " All that is Greek to me. If
any man has made friends and lost them, it is
I. I lost a friend in Lima once, but he turned
up again at Valparaiso, and I can assure you
that the time in between was no tragedy."

Grizzlebeard {solemnly). " You talk lightly
as though you were a younger man than you

50 THE WORST THING

are. The thing of which 1 am speaking is
the gradual weakening, and at last the sever-
ance, of human bonds. It has been said
that no man can see God and live. Here is
another saying for you, very near the same :
No man can be alone and Uve. None, not
even in old age."

He stopped and looked for some little time
into the rising fire. Outside the wind went
round the house, and one could hear the
boughs in the darkness.

Then Grizzlebeard went on :

" When friendship disappears then there is
a space left open to that awful loneliness of
the outside which is like the cold of space
between the planets. It is an air in which
men perish utterly. Absolute dereliction is
the death of the soul ; and the end of living is
a great love abandoned."

Myself. " But the place heals, Grizzlebeard."

Grizzlebeard {still more solemnly). " All
wounds heal in those who are condemned
to live, but in the very process of healing
they harden and forbid renewal. The thing
is over and done."

IN THE WORLD 51

He went on monotonous and grave. He
said that " everything else that there is in the
action of the mind save loving is of its nature
a growth : it goes through its phases of seed,
of miraculous sprouting, of maturity, of somno-
lescence, and of dechne. But with loving it is
not so ; for the comprehension by one soul of
another is something borrowed from whatever
lies outside time; it is not under the condi-
tions of time. Then if it passes, it is past — it
never grows again ; and we lose it as men lose
a diamond, or as men lose their honour."

Myself. " Since you talk of honour. Grizzle-
beard, I should have thought that the loss of
honour was worse than the loss of friends."

Ch^izzlebeai'd. " Oh, no. For the one is a
positive loss, the other imaginary. Moreover,
men that lose their honour have their way out
by any one of the avenues of death. Not so
men who lose the affection of a creature's
eyes. Therein for them, I mean in death, is
no solution : to escape from life is no escape
from that loss. Nor of the many who have
sought in death relief from their affairs is
there one (at least of those I can remember)

52 THE WORST THING

who sought that relief on account of the loss
of a human heart."

Tlie Poet. " When I said * it ' was the worst
thing in the world just now so angrily, I was
foolish. I should have remembered the tooth-
ache."

The Sailor (eagerly and contemptuously).
" Then there you are utterly wrong, for the
earache is much worse."

The Poet. *' I never had the earache."

The Sailor {still contemptuously). " I thought
not I If you had you would write better verse.
It is your innocence of the great emotions that
makes your verse so dreadful — in the minor
sense of that word."

Grizzlebeard. " You are both of you talk-
ing like children. The passing of human
affection is the worst thing in the world.
When our friends die they go from us, but
it is not of their own will ; or if it is of their
own will, it is not of their own will in any con-
tradiction to ours ; or even if it be of their
own will in contradiction to ours and the end
of a quarrel, yet it is a violent thing and still
savours of affection. But that decay of what

IN THE WORLD 53

is living in the heart, and that numbness
supervening, and that last indifference — oh !
these are not to be compared for unhappiness
with any other ill on this unhappy earth.
And all day long and in every place, if you
could survey the w^orld from a height and look
down into the hearts of men, you would see
that frost stealing on."

Myself. " Is this a thing that happens,
Grizzlebeard, more notably to the old?"

Grizzlebeard. " No. The old are used to it.
They know it, but it is not notable to them.
It is notable on the approach of middle age.
When the enthusiasms of youth have grown
either stale or divergent, and when, in the
infinite opportunities which time affords, there
has been opportunity for difference between
friend and friend, then does the evil appear.
The early years of a man's life do not com-
monly breed this accident. So convinced are
we then, and of such energy in the pursuit of
our goal, that if we must separate we part
briskly, each certain that the other is guilty of
a great wrong. The one man will have it that
some criminal is innocent, the other that an

(1,655) E

54 THE WORST THING

innocent man was falsely called a criminal.
The one man loves a war, the other thinks it
unjust and hates it (for all save the money-
dealers think of war in terms of justice). Or
the one man hits the other in the face. These
are violent things. But it is when youth has
ripened, and when the slow processes of life
begin that the danger or the certitude of this
dreadful thing appears : I mean of the passing
of affection. For the mind has settled as the
waters of a lake settle in the hills ; it is full of
its own convictions, it is secure in its philo-
sophy ; it will not mould or adapt itself to the
changes of another. And, therefore, unless
communion be closely maintained, affection
decays. Now when it has decayed, and when
at last it has altogether passed, then comes
that awful vision of which I have spoken,
which is the worst thing in the world."

The Poet. ** The great poets, Grizzlebeard,
never would admit this thing. They have
never sung or deplored the passage of human
affection ; they have sung of love turned to
hatred, and of passion and of rage, and of the
calm that succeeds passion, and of the doubt

IN THE WORLD 55

of the soul and of doom, and continually they
have sung of death, but never of the evil of
which you speak."

The Sailor. *'That was because the evil was
too dull ; as I confess I find it I Anything
duller than the loss of a friend ! Why, it is
like writing a poem on boredom or like sing-
ing a song about Welbeck Street, to try and
poetise such things ! Turn rather to this fire,
which is beginning to blaze, thank God ! turn
to it, and expect the morning."

Myself. "You Poet and you Sailor, you
are both of you wrong there. The thing
has been touched upon, though very charily,
for it is not matter for art. It just skims the
surface of the return of Odysseus, and the
poet Shakespeare has a song about it which
you have doubtless heard. It is sung by
gentlemen painted with grease paint and
dressed in green cloth, one of whom is a
Duke, and therefore wears a feather in his
cap. They sit under canvas trees, also painted,
and drink out of cardboard goblets, quite
empty of all wine ; these goblets are evidently
empty, for they hold them anyhow ; if there

56 THE WORST THING

were real wine in them it would drop out.
And thus accoutred and under circumstances
so ridiculous, they sing a song called * Blow,
blow, thou winter wind.' Moreover, a poet
has written of the evil thing in this very
County of Sussex, in these two lines:

' The things I loved have all grown wearisome.

The things that loved me are estranged or dead.' "

Grizzlebeard. " * Estranged ' is the word : I
was looking for that word. Estrangement is
the saddest thing in the world."

The Sailor. '* I cannot make head or tail of
all this ! "

The Poet, *' Have you never lost a friend ? "

The Sailor. " Dozens — as I've already told
you. And the one I most regret was a doctor
man whom the owners shipped with us for
a run to the Plate and back again. But I
have never let it weigh upon my mind."

Grizzlebeard. "The reason that the great
poets have touched so little upon this thing
is precisely because it is the worst thing in
the world. It is a spur to no good deed,
nor to any strong thinking, nor does it in

IN THE WORLD 57

any way emend the mind. Now the true
poets, whether they will or no, are bound
to emend the mind ; they are constrained to
concern themselves with noble things. But
in this there is nothing noble. It has not
even horror nor doom to enhance it; it is an
end, and it is an end without fruition. It
is an end which leaves no questions and no
quest. It is an end without adventure, an
end complete, a nothingness ; and there is no
matter for art in the mortal hunger of the
soul."

And after this sad speech of his we were
again silent, lying now at length before the
fire, and the Sailor having Ut a pipe and
smoking it.

Then I remembered a thing I had read
once, and I said :

Myself. " I read once in a book of a man
who was crossing a heath in a wild country
not far from the noise of the sea. The wind
and the rain beat upon him, and it was very
cold, so he was glad to see a light upon the
heath a long way off. He made towards it
and, coming into that place, found it to be

58 THE FAIRY MASS

a chapel where some twenty or thirty were
singing, and there was a priest at the altar
saying Mass at midnight, and there was a
monk serving his Mass. Now this traveller
noticed how warm and brilliant was the
place ; the windows shone with their colours,
and all the stone was carved ; the altar was
all alight, and the place was full of singing,
for the twenty or thirty still sang, and he
sang with them. . . . But their faces he
could not see, for the priest who said the
Mass and the man who served the Mass both
had their faces from him, and all in that
congregation were hooded, and their faces
were turned away from him also, but their
singing was loud, and he joined in it. He
thought he was in fairyland. And so he
was. For as that Mass ended he fell asleep,
suffused with warmth, and his ears still full
of music ; but when he woke he found that
the place was a ruin, the windows empty,
and the wind roaring through ; no glass, or
rather a few broken panes, and these quite
plain and colourless ; dead leaves of trees
blown in upon the altar steps, and over the

THE FAIRY MASS 59

whole of it the thin and miserable light of
a winter dawn.

"This story which I read went on to say
that the man went on his journey under that
new and unhappy Ught of a stormy winter
dawn, on over the heath in the wild country.
But though he had made just such a journey
the day before, yet his mind was changed.
In the interlude he had lost something great ;
therefore the world was worth much less to
him than it had been the day before, though
if he had heard no singing in between, nor had
seen no lights at evening, the journey would
have seemed the same. This advantage first,
and then that loss succeeding, had utterly im-
poverished him, and his journey meant nothing
to him any more. This is the story which I
read, and I take it you mean something of
the kind."

"Yes, I meant something of the kind,"
said Grizzlebeard in answer, sighing. " I was
thinking of the light that shines through the
horn, and how when the light is extinguished
the horn thickens cold and dull. I was
thinking of irrevocable things."

60 THE BEST THING

At this the Poet, whom we had thought
dozing, started to his feet.

"Oh, let us leave so disheartening a
matter," said he, "and consider rather what
is the best thing in the world than what is
the worst. For in the midst of this wood,
where everything is happy except man, and
where the night should teach us quiet, we
ought to learn or discover what is the best
thing in the world."

" I know of no way of doing that," said the
Sailor, " but by watching the actions of men
and seeing to what it is they will chiefly
attach themselves. For man knows his own
nature, and that which he pursues must
surely be his satisfaction ? Judging by which
measure I determine that the best thing in
the world is flying at full speed from
pursuit, and keeping up hammer and thud
and gasp and bleeding till the knees fail
and the head grows dizzy, and at last we
all fall down and that thing (whatever it
is) which pursues us catches us up and eats
our carcases. This way of managing our
lives, I think, must be the best thing in the

IN THE WORLD 61

world — for nearly all men choose to live
thus."

Myself. *' What you say there. Sailor,
seems sound enough, but I am a little puzzled
in this point : why, if most men follow their
satisfaction, most men come to so wretched
an end ? "

The Sailor. "Why that I cannot tell.
That is their business. But certainly as I
have watched men it seems to me that they
regard being hunted as the best thing in the
world. For one man having as much as
would enable him (if he were so inclined) to
see the world of God, and to eat all kinds
of fruit and flesh, and to drink the best of
beer, will none the less start a race with a
Money- Devil : a fleet, strong Money -Devil
with a goad. And when this Money-Devil
has given him some five years start, say until
he is nearly thirty years of age, then will that
man start racing and careering and bounding
and flying with the Money-Devil after him,
over hill and valley, field and fen, and wood
and waste, and the high heaths and the wolds,
until at last (somewhere about sixty as a rule

62 THE MONEY-DEVIL

or a little later) he gives a great cry and
throws up his hands and falls down. Then
does the Money-Devil come and eat him up.
Many millions love such a course.

*' And there is also that other sort of
hunt, in which some appetite or lust sets
out a-chasing the jolly human, and puts him
at fence and hedge, and gate and dyke, and
round the spinney and over the stubble and
racing over the bridge, and then double again
through copse and close, and thicket and
thorn, until he has spent his breath upon the
high Downs, and then, after a little respite,
a second clear run all the way to the grave.
Which, when the hunted human sees it very
near at hand, he commonly stops of set
purpose, and this thing that has chased him
catches him up and eats him, even as did
the other. Millions are seen to pursue this
lust-hunted course, and some even try to com-
bine it with that other sort of money-devil-
huntedness. But the advice is given to all in
youth that they must make up their minds
which of the two sorts of exercises they would
choose, and the first is commonly praised and

THE GREAT SLOTH 63

thought worthy; the second blamed. Why,
I do not know. Our elders say to us, * Boy,
choose the Money-Devil, give that Lord his
run.' Both kinds of sport have seemed to me
most miserable, but then I speak only for
myself, and I am eccentric in the holidays I
choose and the felicity I discover for myself
in the conduct of my years.

" For, so far as I am concerned, my
pleasure is found rather in having a game with
that Great Three-toed Sloth, which is the
most amiable of hell's emissaries, and all my
life have I played the jolly game of tickling
him forward and lolloping in front of him,
now lying down until he has caught me up,
and then slouching off until he came near
again, and even at times making a spurt that
I might have the longer sleep at the end,
and give honest Sloth a good long waddle
for his money.

" Yet after all, my method is the same as
every one else's, and will have the same
end.

" For when I see the grave a long way off,
then do I mean to put on slippers and to

64 THE GREAT SLOTH

mix myself a great bowl of mulled wine with
nutmegs, and to fill a pipe, and to sit me
down in a great arm-chair before a fire of oak
or beech, burning in a great hearth, within
sound of the Southern Sea.

" And as I sit there, drinking my hot wine
and smoking my long pipe, and watching the
fire, and remembering old storms and land-
falls far away, I shall hear the plodding and
the paddling and the shuffling and the muffling
of that great Sloth, my life's pursuer, and he
will butt at my door with his snout, but
I shall have been too lazy to lock it, and so
shall he come in. Then the Great Three-toed
Sloth will eat me up, and thus shall / find
the end of my being and have reached the
best thing in the world."

Myself. " While you were speaking. Sailor,
it seemed to me you had forgotten one great
felicity, manly purpose, and final completion
of the immortal spirit, which is surely the
digging of holes and the filling of them up
again ? "

The Sailor. *' You are right ! I had for-
gotten that I It is indeed an admirable

OF DIGGING AND FILLING 65

pastime, and for some, perhaps for many, it
is the best thing in the world 1"

Myself. " Yes, indeed, for consider how we
drink to thirst again, and eat to hunger again,
and love for disappointment, and journey in
order to return. And consider with what
elaborate care we cut, clip, shave, remove
and prune our hair and beard, which none
the less will steadfastly re-grow, and how we
earn money to spend it, and black boots
before walking in the mire, and do penance
before sinning, and sleep to wake, and wake
to sleep ; and very elaborately do pin, button,
tie, hook, hang, lace, draw, pull up, be-tighten,
and in diverse ways fasten about ourselves our
very complicated clothes of a morning, only
to unbutton, unpin, untie, unhook, let down,
be-loosen, and in a thousand operations put
them off again when midnight comes. Then
there is the soiling of things for their clean-
sing, and the building of houses to pull them
down again, and the making of wars for de-
feat or for barren victories, and the painting
of pictures for the rich blind, and the singing
of songs for the wealthy deaf, and the living

66 THE BEST THING IN

of all life to the profit of others, and the
begetting of children who may perpetuate all
that same round. The more I think of it
the more I see that the digging of holes and
the filling of them up again is the true end
of man and his felicity."

The Poet. " I think you must be wrong."

Myself. " Well then, since you know, what
is the best thing in the world ? "

The Poet. " It is a mixture wherein should
be compounded and intimately mixed great
wads of unexpected money, new landscapes,
and the return of old loves."

The Sailor. " Oh, hear him with his return
of old loves I All coming in procession, two
by two, Hke the old maids of Midhurst troop-
ing out of church of a Sunday morning I
One would think he had slain a hundred with
his eye ! "

Grizzlebeard. "All you young men talk
folly. The best thing in the world is sleep."

And having said so much, Grizzlebeard
stretched himself upon the bench along one
side of the fire, and, pulling his blanket over
his head, he would talk to us no more. And

THE WORLD IS SLEEP

67

we also after a little while, lying huddled in
our coats before the blaze, slept hard. And so
we passed the hours till morning ; now waking
in the cold to start a log, then sleeping again.
And all night long the wind sounded in the
trees.

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THE THIRTY-FmST OF
OCTOBER 1902

(1,666)

THE THIRTY-FIRST OF OCTOBER

1902

I WOKE next morning to the noise, the plea-
sant noise, of water boiling in a kettle. May
God bless that noise and grant it to be the
most sacred noise in the world. For it is
the noise that babes hear at birth and that
old men hear as they die in their beds, and
it is the noise of our households all our
long Uves long ; and throughout the world,
wherever men have hearths, that purring and
that singing, and that humming and that

72 THE KETTLE SINGS

talking to itself of warm companionable water
to our great ally, the fire, is home.

So thought I, half awake, and half asleep
upon the hard dry earth of that floor. Yet,
as I woke, my mind, not yet in Sussex,
thought I was sleeping in an open field, and
that there were round me comrades of the
regiment, and that the embers that warmed
my feet were a bivouac fire. Then I sat up,
broad awake, and stiff after such a lodging,
to find the Sailor crouching over the renewed
flames of two stout logs on which he
had established a kettle and water from a
spring. He had also with him a packet of
tea and some sugar, a loaf, and a little
milk.

Grizzlebeard, stiff and stark upon his back
along the bench, his head fallen flat, unsup-
ported, his mouth open, breathing but slightly,
seemed like a man dead. As for the Poet,
he lay bunched up as would a man who had
got the last bit of warmth he could ; and he
was still in a dead sleep, right up against the
further corner of the fire.

I shook my coat from me and stood up.

THE TROLL 78

** Sailor," I said, " how long have you been
awake ? "

To which the Sailor answered :

" Ever since I was born : worse luck ! I
never sleep."

" Where did you get those things," said I,
"that tea, that milk, that sugar, and that
loaf?"

I yawned as I said it, and then I stretched
my hands, which sleep had numbed, towards
the rising life of the fire. The Sailor was still
crouching at the kettle as he answered me
slowly and with care :

" Why, you must know that near this house
there lives a Troll, who many many years ago
when he was young was ensnared by the love
of a Fairy, upon that heath called Over-the-
world. And he brought her home to be his
bride, and lives close by here in a hut that is
not of this world. He is my landlord, as it
were, and he it was that gave me this tea,
this milk, this sugar, and this loaf, but it is
no good your asking where, for no one can
find that warlock house of theirs but me."

" That was a long lie to tell," said I, ♦* for

74 THE POET IS KICKED

I certainly should not have bothered myself
to find out where the things came from, so
only that I can get them free."

"You are right," said the Sailor, "and I
also got them free."

And having said that he upset the packet
of tea, and the sugar, and the milk, right
into the kettle, so that I cried out to him
in alarm :

" What are you at ? "

But he told me, as he took the kettle off:

*' That is the way the Troll - tea was
brewed by the Master-maid upon the heath
called Over-the-world. I have been there, so
I know."

And with that he gave a great kick at the
Poet, who sat up suddenly from his lump of
clothes, looked wild for a moment, then knew
where he was, and said " Oh I "

*' It doesn't rhyme," said the Sailor, " but
you shall have some tea."

He poured out from the kettle, into the
common mug we carried, a measure of the
tea, and with his jack-knife he cut off a slice
of bread.

AND ALL PUT ORDERLY 75

Our talk had awakened Grizzlebeard. That
older man rose painfully from sleep, as though
to see the day again were not to one of his
years any very pleasing thing. He sat upon
the bench, and for him, as to the one of
honour, the tea was next poured out into that
silver mug of his, and then was handed to
him the next slice of bread. Then I drank
and ate, and then the Sailor, and when aU
this was done we made things orderly in the
hut, the Sailor and I. We folded the blankets
and stood up the unburnt logs. We poured
the kettle out and drank the milk, and stood
the loaf upon the ingle-nook, and bidding fare-
well to that unknown place we left it, to
converse with it no more. But the reason we
had to put all things in order so, was (the
Sailor told me) that if we angered the Troll
he might never let us sleep there again.

" You are wonderful company, Sailor I "
said I.

" For others, perhaps," said he, as he locked
the door and put the key in his pocket, " but
not for myself; and yet that is the only thing
that matters 1 "

76 THE SAILOR TAKES US

By this time we were all upon the forest
path again, turning this way and that as the
Sailor might lead us. Sometimes we crossed
a great ride without turning down it, and once
the broad high road. But we went straight
across that, and we passed many signs where
it said that any common man found in these
woods would be imprisoned, and some where
it said that any one not rich and yet wander-
ing here might find themselves killed by
engines. But the Sailor dodged his way
nimbly about, making westward through it
all, but so cunningly that even I, who know
my County well, grew puzzled. I could not
guess in what part of the wood we were until
we came to a bottom through which a stream
ran, and then I knew that this stream was
the rising of the Mole, and that we were in
Tilgate. Then I said to my companions :
*' Now the woods smell of home ! "

But Grizzlebeard said that, considering what
the world was like outside the County, all the
County was home. And the Poet said that
here were homing bits in the forest, and there
were homing bits, and others that were stranger

THROUGH THE WOOD 77

to him, and had not the spirit of our
land.

But the Sailor said nothing, only leading
us forward by clever paths so that the servants
of the rich could not do us any hurt, and then
he got us into an open glade, and there we
sat and rested for a moment, with our breath
drawing in the morning.

For the morning was not as the night had
been, full of wind and hurrying clouds, but
it was the morning after a gale, in which,
on these high hills and among these lifting
trees, the air was ambassadorial, bringing a
message of life from the sea. But it was a
halted air. It no longer followed in the pro-
cession of the gale, but was steady and arrived.
So that the sky above us was not clouded,
and had in it no sign of movement, but was
pale with a wintry blue. And there was a
frost and a bite all about, although it was so
early in the year and winter hardly come.
But the leaves had fallen early that year, and
the forest was already desolate.

When we had rested ourselves a moment in
this glade we followed the Sailor again by a

78 ABOUT ST. LEONARD

path which presently he left, conducting us
with care through untouched underwood,
until we came to a hedge, and there across
the hedge was the great main road and Pease
Pottage close at hand.

" I have led you through this wood," the
Sailor said, " and now you may take what road
you will."

Myself. " Now, indeed, I know every yard
of the way ; and 1 will take you down towards
our own country. But I will take you in my
own fashion, for I know the better places, and
the quiet lands, and a roof under which we
shall be free to sleep at evening. You shall
follow me."

" You know all this ? " said Grizzlebeard
to me curiously, " then can you tell me why
all these woods are called St. Leonard's
Forest ? "

Myself. "Why, certainly; they are called
St. Leonard's Forest after St. Leonard."

The Poet. " Are you so sure ? "

Myself. "Without a doubt! For it is certain
that St. Leonard lived here, and had a little
hermitage in the days when poor men might

AND HIS CELL 79

go where they willed. And this hermitage was
in that place to which I shall presently take
you, from which it is possible to worship at
once both our County, and God who made it."

Saying which I took them along the side
road which starts from Pease Pottage (and in
those days the old inn was there), but before
doing so I asked them severally whether they
had any curse on them which forbade them to
drink ale of a morning.

This all three of them denied, so we went
into the Swan (which in those days I say
again was the old inn), and we drank ale,
as St. Leonard himself was used to do, round
about nine or ten o'clock of an autumn
morning. For he was born in these parts,
and never went out of the County except
once to Germany, when he would convert the
heathen there; of whom, returning, he said
that if it should please God he would rather
be off to hell to convert devils, but that
anyhow he was tired of wandering, and there-
upon set up his hermitage in the place to
which I was now leading my companions.

For when we had gone about a mile by the

80 ABOUT ST. LEONARD

road I knew, we came to that place where
the wood upon the left ends sharply upon
that height and suddenly beneath one's feet
the whole County lies revealed.

There, a day's march away to the south,
stood the rank of the Downs.

No exiles who have seen them thus, coming
back after many years, and following the road
from London to the sea, hungry for home, were
struck more suddenly or more suddenly uplifted
by that vision of their hills than we four men
so coming upon it that morning, and I was
for the moment their leader; for this was a
place I had cherished ever since I was a boy.

*' Look," said I to Grizzlebeard, " how true
it is that in this very spot a man might set
his seat whence-from to worship all that he
saw, and God that must have made it."

"You are right," said Grizzlebeard ; " I see
before me the Weald in a tumbled garden,
Wolstonbury above New Timber and Highden
and Rackham beyond " (for these are the
names of the high hills), " and far away west-
ward I see under Duncton the Garden of Eden,
1 think, to which we are bound. And sitting

AND HIS CELL 81

crowned in the middle place I see Chancton-
bury, which, I think, a dying man remem-
bers so fixed against the south, if he is a
man from Ashurst, or from Thakeham, or
from the pine-woods by the rock, whenever
by some evil-fortune a Sussex man dies far
away from home."

" Tell me," said the Sailor, " can you fix
for us here the place where St. Leonard built
his hermitage ? "

"Certainly," said I, and they gathered
round.

" Here," said I, " was the cella " (drawing a
circle with my stick upon the ground), " and
here " (moving off a yard or two) " was his
narthex or carfax^ as some call it, and here to
the right" (and here I moved backwards and
drew my stick across some sand) " was the
bibulatium ; but all the ruins of this monument
have disappeared through quarrying and the
effects of time, saving always such traces as
can be distinguished by experts, and I am
one."

Then, wishing to leave them no time for
wrangling, I took them down away through

82 THE LAKE WHERE

Shelley Plain, and when I had gone a mile
or so I said :

"Is not the river to which we are bound
the river of Arun ? "

The Poet. ** Why, yes. If it were not so
I would never have joined you."

The Sailor. " Certainly we are bound for
Arun, which, when a man bathes in it, makes
him forget everything that has come upon
him since his eighteenth year — or possibly his
twenty-seventh.

"Yes," said Grizzlebeard, more gravely,
" we are bound for the river of Arun, which
is as old as it is young, and therein we hope
to find our youth, and to discover once again
the things we knew."

"Why, then," said I, "let me mock you
and cover you with disillusion, and profane
your shrines, and disappoint your pilgrimage I
For that trickle of water below you to the left
in the dale, and that long lake you see with
a lonely wood about either shore is the place
where Arun rises."

Grizzlebeard. "That is nothing to me as
we go along our way. It is not httle baby

ARUN RISES 83

Arun that I come to see, but Arun in his
majesty, married to salt water, and a king."

The Sailor. "For my part I am glad to
have assisted at the nativity of Arun. Prosper,
beloved river I It is your business (not mine)
if you choose to go through so many doubt-
ful miles of youth, and to grope uncertainly
towards fruition and the sea."

The Poet. " There is always some holiness
in the rising of rivers, and a great attachment
to their springs."

By this time we had come to the lake foot,
where a barrier holds in the water, and the
road crosses upon a great dam. And we
watched as we passed it the plunge of the
cascade ; and then passing over that young
river we went up over the waste land to
the height called Lower Beeding, which
means the lower place of prayer, and is
set upon the very summit of a hill. Just
as Upper Beeding is at the very lowest point
in the whole County of Sussex, right down,
down, down upon the distant marshes of
Adur, flush, as you may say, with the sea.

For when Adam set out (with the help of

84 HOW ADAM NAMED

Eve) to name all the places of the earth (and
that is why he had to live so long), he desired
to distinguish Sussex, late his happy seat, by
some special mark which should pick it out
from all the other places of the earth, its
inferiors and vassals. So that when Paradise
might be regained and the hopeless genera-
tion of men permitted to pass the Flaming
Sword at Shiremark Mill, and to see once
more the four rivers, Arun and Adur, and
Cuckmere and Ouse, they might know their
native place again and mark it for Paradise.
And the best manner (thought Adam) so to
establish by names this good peculiar place,
this Eden which is Sussex still, was to make
her names of a sort that should give fools to
think. So he laid it down that whatever was
high in Sussex should be called low, and
whatever was low should be called high, and
that a hill should be called a plain, and a bank
should be called a ditch, and the North wood
should be south of the Downs, and the Nore
Hill south of the wood, and South water north
of them all, and that no one in the County
should pronounce " th," " ph," or " sh," but

ALL SUSSEX 85

always " h " separately, under pain of damna-
tion. And that names should have their last
letters weighed upon, contrariwise to the
custom of all England.

So much for our names, which any man
may prove for himself by considering Bos-ham,
and Felp-ham, and Hors-ham, and Arding-ly,
and the square place called " Roundabout."
Or the Broadbridge, which is so narrow that
two carts cannot pass on it. God knows we
are a single land !

We had passed then, we four (and hungry,
and stepping strongly, for it was downhill),
we had passed under the cold pure air of that
good day from Lower Beeding down the hill
past Leonard's Lee, and I was telling my
companions how we might hope to eat and
drink at the Crabtree or at Little Cowfold,
when the Sailor suddenly began to sing in a
manner so loud and joyful that in some more
progressive place than the County he would
most certainly have been thrown into prison.
But the occasion of his song was a good
one, for debouching through the wooded
part of the road we had just come upon

(1,656) Q

86

THE FIRST

that opening whence once more, though
from a lower height, the open Weald and
the magnificence of the Downs is spread
out to glorify men's eyes. He sang that
song, which is still native to this land,
through all the length of it, and we who had
heard it each in our own place first helped
him with the chorus, and then swelled it alto-
gether in diverse tones. He beginning : —

" On Sussex hills where I was bred.
When lanes in autumn rains are red.
When Arun tumbles in his bed,
And busy great gusts go by ;
When branch is bare in Burton Glen
And Bury Hill is a whitening, then,
I drink strong ale with gentlemen ;
Which nobody can deny, deny.
Deny, deny, deny, deny.

Which nobody can deny !

DRINKING SONG 87

II

" In half-November off I go.
To push my face against the snow,
And watch the winds wherever they blow.

Because my heart is high :
Till I settle me down in Steyning to sing
Of the women I met in my wandering.
And of all that I mean to do in the spring.
Which nobody can deny, deny,
Deny, deny, deny, deny.

Which nobody can deny 1

III

" Then times be rude and weather be rough.
And ways be foul and fortune tough.
We are of the stout South Country stuff,
That never can have good ale enough.

And do this chorus cry !
From Crowboro' Top to Ditchling Down,
From Hurstpierpoint to Arundel town.
The girls are plump and the ale is brown :
Which nobody can deny, deny.
Deny, deny, deny, deny !

If he does he tells a lie ! "

When we had all done singing and were

near the Crabtree, the Sailor said :
" Now, was not that a good song ? "
" Yes," said I, " and well suited to this

morning and to this air, and to that broad

88 THE PLACES WHERE

sight of the lower land which now spreads
out before us."

For even as I spoke we had come to that
little shelf on which the Crabtree stands,
and from which one may see the Downs all
stretched before one, and Bramber Gap, and
in the notch of it the high roof of Lancing ;
and then onwards, much further away,
Arundel Gap and the hills and woods of
home. It was certainly in the land beneath
us, and along the Weald, which we over-
looked, that once, many years ago, a young
man must have written this song.

Grizzlebeard. " In what places. Myself, do
you find that you can sing ? "

Myself. *' In any place whatsoever."

The Sailor. " As, for instance, at the table
of some rich money-lending man who has
a few men friends to dinner that night, with
whom he would discuss Affairs of State, and
who has only asked you because you were
once a hanger-on of his great-nephew's. This
would seem to me an excellent occasion on
which to sing ' Golier ! ' "

Tlie Poet. " Yes, or again, when you are

MEN MAY SING 89

coming (yourself small and unknown) to the
reception of some wealthy hostess from whom
you expect advancement. It was in such a
place and at such a time that Charlie Rib-
ston, now in jail, did first so richly produce
his song, * The Wowly Wows,' which has that
jolly chorus to it."

Grizzlebeard. " The reason I asked you
where you could sing was, that I thought
it now impossible in any place, I mean in
this realm, and in our dreadful time. For
is there not a law, and is it not in force,
whereby any man singing in the open, if he
be overheard by the police, shall be certified
by two doctors, imprisoned, branded, his
thumb marks taken, his hair shaved off, one
of his eyes put out, all his money matters
carefully gone into backwards and forwards,
and, in proportion to the logarithm of his
income a large tax laid on ? And after all
this the duty laid upon him under heavy pains
of reporting himself every month to a local
committee, with the parson's wife up top,
and to a politician's jobber, and to all such
other authorities as may see fit, pursuant to

90 THE GLORY OF

the majesty of our Lord the King, his crown
and dignity ? I seem to have heard some-
thing of the kind."

" Yes, you are right enough," said I ; " but
when a man comes to lonely places, which
are like islands and separate from this sea
of tyranny, as, for instance, this road by
Leonard's Lee, why a man can still sing."

The Sailor. *' Yes, and in an inn."

" In a few inns," said I, " under some con-
ditions and at certain times."

Grizzlebeard. " Very well, we will choose
upon this march of ours such inns and such
times. And is this one ? " he added, point-
ing to the Crabtree.

" Not outside," I answered cautiously, *• nor
at this hour."

" However," said the Poet, " we will eat."

So we sat outside there upon the benches
of the Crabtree Inn, eating bread and
cheese.

Now when we had eaten our bread and
cheese in that cold, still air, and overlook-
ing so great a scene below us, and when we
had drunk yet more of the ale, and also of

THE CRABTKEE 91

a port called Jubilee (for the year of Jubilee
was, at the time this walk was taken, not
more than five years past), the Sailor said
in a sort of challenging tone :

" You were saying, I think, that a man
could only sing to-day in certain lonely
places, such as all down that trim hedge-
row, which is the roadside of Leonard's Lee,
and when Grizzlebeard here asked whether
a man might sing outside the Crabtree, you
said no. But I will make the experiment ;
and by way of compromise, so that no one
may be shocked, my song shall be of a re-
ligious sort, dealing with the great truths.
And perhaps that will soften the heart of the
torturers, if indeed they have orders, as you
say, to persecute men for so simple a thing
as a song."

Grizzlebeard. " If your song is one upon
the divinities, it will not go with ale and
with wine, nor with the character of an
inn."

The Sailor. "Do not be so sure. Wait
until you have heard it. For this song that
I am proposing to sing is of a good loud

92

THE DRINKING SONG

roaring sort, but none the less it deals with
the ultimate things, and you must know
that it is far more than one thousand years
old. Now it cannot be properly sung unless
the semi-chorus (which I will indicate by
raising my hands) is sung loudly by all of you
together, nor unless the chorus is bellowed
by the lot of you for dear life's sake, until
the windows rattle and the populace rise.
Such is the nature of the song."

Having said so much then, the Sailor, lean-
ing back, began in a very full and decisive
manner to sing this

Song of the Pelagian Heresy for the Strengthening
OF Men's Backs and the very Robust Out-
thrusting OF Doubtful Doctrine and the Uncer-
tain Intellectual.

Pelagius lived in Kardanoel,

And taught a doctrine there,
How whether you went to Heaven or Hell,

It was your own affair.

OF PELAGIUS 98

How, whether you found eternal joy

Or sank forever to burn,
It had nothing to do with the Church, my boy,

But was your own concern.

Grizzlebeard. " This song is blasphemous."
The Sailor. "Not at all — the exact con-
trary, it is orthodox. But now I beg of you
do not interrupt, for this is the semi-chorus."

[Semi-chorus. '\

Oh, he didn't believe
In Adam and Eve,

He put no faith therein !
His doubts began
With the fall of man.

And he laughed at original sin !

In this semi-chorus we all joined, catching
it up as he went along, and then the Sailor,
begging us to put all our manhood into it,
launched upon the chorus itself, which was
both strong and simple.

[Chorus.^

With my row-ti-tow, ti-oodly-ow,
He laughed at original sin I

When we had got as far as this, which was
the end of the first verse, and defines the

94 THE DRI^^KING SONG

matter in hand, the very extravagant noise of
it all brought out from their dens not a few of
the neighbourhood, who listened and waited
to see what would come. But the Sailor, not
at all abashed, continued, approaching the
second verse.

Whereat the Bishop of old Auxerre

(Germanus was his name),
He tore great handfuls out of his hair.

And he called Pelagius Shame :
And then with his stout Episcopal staff

So thoroughly thwacked and banged
The heretics all, both short and tall.

They rather had been hanged.

[Semt-chorus.^

Oh, he thwacked them hard, and he banged them long,

Upon each and all occasions.
Till they bellowed in chorus, loud and strong,
Their orthodox persuasions !

[Chorus.]

With my row-ti-tow, ti-oodly-ow.

Their orthodox persu-a-a-sions '

At the end of this second verse the crowd
had grown greater, and not a few of them
had dropped their lower jaws and stood with
their mouths wide open, never having heard
a song of this kind before. But the Sailor,

OF PELAGIUS 95

looking kindly upon them, and nodding at
them, as much as to say, " You will under-
stand it all in a minute," took on the third
verse, with still greater gusto, and sang : —

Now the Faith is old and the Devil is bold.

Exceedingly bold indeed;
And the masses of doubt that are floating about

Would smother a mortal creed.
But we that sit in a sturdy youth.

And still can drink strong ale.
Oh — let us put it away to infallible truth.

Which always shall prevail !

[^Semi-chorus. ]

And thank the Lord
For the temporal sword,

And howling heretics too ;
And whatever good things
Our Christendom brings.

But especially barley brew !

[Chorus.^

With my row-ti-tow, ti-oodly-ow.
Especially barley brew !

When we had finished this last chorus in a
louder mode than all the rest, you may say
that half the inhabitants of that hill were
standing round. But the Sailor, rising
smartly and putting money down upon the
table to pay for our fare and somewhat

96 THE GOOD GOVERNMENT

over, bade us all rise with him, which
we did, and then he spoke thus to the
assembly : —

"Good people I I trust you clearly heard
every word of what we have just delivered to
you, for it is Government business, and we
were sent to give it to you just as we had
ourselves received it of the Cabinet, whose
envoys we are. And let me add for your
comfort that this same Government of our
Lord the King (his crown and dignity), ever
solicitous for the welfare of poorer folk, has
given us monies wherewith to refresh all the
people of Sussex all our way along. On which
account I have left here upon the table, in the
name of the aforesaid Right Honourables, a
sum of five shillings, against which you may
order ale to the breaking point, and so good-
day to you. But you are strictly charged
that you do not follow us or molest us in
any fashion, to the offence of those good
Ministers who lie awake at night, consider-
ing the good of the people, and the service of
our Lord the King (his crown and dignity).
Oyez 1 Le Roi le veulL ! "

HABAKKUK'S PROPHECY 97

And having said this he beckoned us to
follow him, and as we strode down the road
we heard them all cheering loudly, for they
thought that time had come which is spoken
of by the Prophet Habakkuk, "When the
poor shall be filled and the rich shall be
merry." A thing that never yet was since
the beginning of the world.

• •••••

As we swung down the road which leads at
last to Little Cowfold, Grizzlebeard, thinking
about that song, said :

" I cannot believe, Sailor, that your song is
either old or true ; for there is no such place
as Kardanoel, and Pelagius never lived there,
and his doctrine was very different from what
you say, and the blessed Germanus would not
have hurt a fly. As witness that battle of his
somewhere in Flint, where he discomforted
the Scotch, of all people, by talking Hebrew
too loud, although he only knew one word of
the tongue. Then, also, what you say of ale
is not ecclesiastical, nor is it right doctrine to
thank the Lord for heresy."

Tlie Sailor. " Anything you will I But

98 WE COME TO

every church must have its customs within
reason, and this song, or rather hymn, is of
Breviary, and very properly used in the
diocese of Theleme upon certain feast days.
Yes, notably that of Saints Comus and
Hilarius, who, having nothing else to do,
would have been cruelly martyred for the
faith had they not contrariwise, as befits
Christian men, be-martyred and banged to
death their very persecutors in turn. It is
a prose of the church militant, and is ascribed
to Dun-Scotus, but is more probably of tradi-
tional origin. Compare the * Hymn to the
Ass,' which all good Christian men should
know."

Ghizzlebeard. "Nevertheless I doubt if it
be for the strengthening of souls, but rather
a bit of ribaldry, more worthy of the Martyrs'
Mount which you may know, than of holy
Sussex."

When we had come to Little Cowfold,
which we did very shortly, it was already past
three in the afternoon, and therefore in such
early weather (more wintry than autumn) the
air had a touch of evening, and looking at the

LITTLE COWFOLD 99

church there and admiring it, we debated
whether we should stop in that place a little
while and pick a quarrel with any one, or
lacking that, sing another song, or lacking
that, drink silently. For Virgil says, " Pro-
pria quae Cowfold Carmen Cervisia Ludus."

But as it was so late we thought we would
not do any of these things, but take the
way along to Henfield and get us near to the
Downs, though how far we should go that
night we none of us could tell. Only we
were settled on this, that by the next day,
which would be All-Hallows, we must come
upon the river Arun and the western part of
the County, and all the things we knew.

So we went on southward towards Henfield,
and as we went, Grizzlebeard, who was strid-
ing strongly, reminded us that it was All
Halloween. On this night of all nights in the
year there is most stir and business among
the things that are not seen by men, and
there is a rumour in all the woods ; and
very late, when men are sleeping, all those
who may not come to earth at any other
time, come and hold their revels. The Little

100 THE LITTLE PEOPLE

People who are good for the most part, dance
this night in the meadows and undergrowth,
and move in and out of the reeds along the
river bank, and twine round and round in
rings holding hands upon the flat pastures,
the water meadows, and the heaths that are
nearer the sea. It is this dancing of theirs
that leaves upon the grass its track in a
brighter green, and marks the fields with
those wheels and circles which convince un-
believing men.

The Poet said that he had seen the Little
People, but we knew that what he said was
false.

Grizzlebeard said that though he had not
seen them he believed, in reward for which
the Little People had blest him all his life.
And that was why (he told us) he was so rich,
for though his father had left him plenty, the
Little People had increased it, because he
had neither doubted them nor ever wished
them ill.

The Sailor. *' Then you were lucky I For
it is well known that those who come upon
the Little People dancing round and round are

THE LITTLE PEOPLE 101

caught by them in the middle of the ring. And
the Little People laugh at them with a noise
like very small silver bells. And then, as though
to make amends for their laughter, they lead
the mortal away to a place where one can go
underground. And when they get there, in a
fine hall where the Queen sits with Oberon, it
is ordered that the man shall be given gold.
They bring him a sack, and he stuffs it full
of the gold pieces, full to the neck, and he
shoulders it and makes to thank them, when,
quite suddenly, he finds he is no longer in
that hall, but on the open heath at early
morning with no one about, and in an air
quite miserably cold. Then that man, shiver-
ing and wondering whether ever he saw the
Little People or no, says to himself, ' At
least I have my gold.' But when he goes to
take the sack up again he finds it very light,
and pouring out from it upon the ground
he gets, instead of the gold they gave him,
nothing but dead leaves; the round dead
leaves and brown of the beech, and of the
hornbeam, for it is of this sort that they mint
the fairy gold. They say that as he leaves

(1,065) J J

102 WHAT THE LITTLE PEOPLE

it there, disappointed and angry at his adven-
ture, he seems to hear again, though it is day-
Ught, far down beneath the ground, the slight
tinkle of many tinj'' silver bells, and knows
that it is the Little People laughing."

Grizzlebeard, " So it may be for those who
have the great misfortune to see the Little
People, but, as I told you, I have never seen
them, and with me it has been the other way
about. Year after year have I picked up the
dead leaves, until all the leaves of my life
were dead, and year after year I have found
between my hands gold and more gold."

The Poet. " I tell you again I have seen
them, and when I was a younger man I saw
them often, and 1 would be with them for
hours in that good place of theirs where
nothing matters very much and no one goes
away."

The Sailor. " And what did they give you
beyond that loon look which is the mark of
all your tribe ? "

The Poet. " Why, they gave me the power
to conceive good verse, and this I still
retain."

GAVE THE POET 103

The Sailor. " Now indeed, Poet, I believe,
which I did not at first, that you have seen
the Little People. For what you have just
said proves it to me. You also have handled
fairy gold — and there are many like you. For
the Little People gave you verse that seemed
well minted, sterling and sound, and you put
it into your sack and you bore it away. But
when you came out into man's- world and tasted
the upper air, then, as all your hearers and
your readers know, this verse turned out to be
the light and worthless matter of dead leaves.
Oh, do not shake your head ! We know that
verse of youth which the fairies give us in
mockery ; only we, when we grow up, are too
wise to cherish the bag-full. We leave it for
the wind to scatter, for it is all dead leaves.
Only you poets hang on to your bag and
clutch it and carry it with you, making fools
of yourselves all your lives long, while we
sturdy fellows in a manly fashion turn to the
proper things of men in man's -world, and
take to lawyering and building, and the lend-
ing of money and horse-doping, and every
other work that befits a man."

104 LUNA DIES ET NOX

Grizzlebeard. " And you, Myself, have you
ever seen the Fairies ? "

Myself. " I do not think so. I do not
think I have ever seen them : alas for me !
But I think I have heard them once or
twice, murmuring and chattering, and patter-
ing and clattering, and flattering and mocking
at me, and alluring me onwards towards the
perilous edges and the water-ledges where
the torrent tumbles and cascades in the high
hills."

The Sailor. " What did they say to you ?'*

Myself. " They told me I should never get
home, and I never have."

As we so talked the darkness began to gather,
for we had waited once or twice by the way,
and especially at that little lift in the road
where one passes through a glen of oaks and
sees before one great flat water meadows, and
beyond them the high Downs quite near.

The sky was already of an apple green to
the westward, and in the eastern blue there
were stars. There also shone what had not
yet appeared upon that windless day, a few
small wintry clouds, neat and defined in

ET NOCTIS SIGNA SEVERA 105

heaven. Above them the moon, past her
first quarter but not yet full, was no longer
pale, but began to make a cold glory; and
all that valley of Adur w^as a great and solemn
sight to see as we went forward upon our
adventure that led nowhere and away. To us
four men, no one of whom could know the
other, and who had met by I could not tell
what chance, and would part very soon for
ever, these things were given. All four of us
together received the sacrament of that wide
and silent beauty, and we ourselves went in
silence to receive it.

• ■ • • • •

And so when it was full dark we came to
Henfield, and determined that it was time
for bread, and for bacon, and for ale — a night
meal inspired by the road and by the tang
of the cold. For you must know that once
again, though it was yet so early in the year,
a very slight frost had nipped the ground.

We made therefore for an inn in that
place, and asked the mistress of it to fry
us bacon, and with it to give us bread and
as much ale as four men could drink by her

106 OF THE HOG AND

judgment and our own ; and while we sat
there, waiting for this meal, the Sailor said
to me :

*' Come now, Myself, since you say that
you know the County so well, can you tell
us how Hog is made so suitable to Man ? "

Grizzlebeard. " Why, no man can tell that,
for we only know that these things are so.
But some men say that in the beginning the
horse was made for man to ride, and the cow
for man to milk, and the hog for man to
eat; with wheat also, which was given him
to sow in a field, just as those stars and
that waxing moon were given him to lift
his eyes towards heaven, and the sun to
give him light and warmth by day. But
others say that all things are a jumble,
and that the stars care nothing for us,
and that the moon, if only the truth were
known, is a very long way off, and a use-
less beast (God forgive me I It is not I
that speak thus, but they I), and that we
just happened upon horses (which I can well
believe when I see some men ride), and that
even that most-perfectly-fitting creature and

HIS GREAT SERVICE 107

manifestly-adapted-to-man, that hale four-
footed one, the Hog, was but an accident, and
is not an end in himself for us, but may, in the
change of human affairs, be replaced by some
other more suitable thing. All things are made
for an end, but who shall say what end ? "

Myself. " Those who talk thus, Grizzlebeard,
have not carefully considered the works of
man, nor his curious ways, which betray in
him the reflection of his Creator, and mark
him for an artist. The curing of Hog Flesh
till it become bacon is a sure evidence of
the creed. There are those, I know, who
still pretend that the pin and the needle,
the hammer and the saw, and even the violin,
grew up and were fashioned bit by bit, man
stumbling towards them from experiment to
experiment. At these atheists I howl, be-
lieving verily and without doubt that in
the beginning, when grandfather and grand-
mother were turned out of Eden, and were
compelled by some Order in Council or other
to leave this County (but we are now re-
turned), they were very kindly presented by
the authorities with the following : —

108 MAN'S FURNISHING

" One tool-box.
A cock and six hens.

Some paint and brushes and a tube of sepia.
Six pencils, running from BB. to 4H.
Tobacco in a tin.
A Greek Grammar and Lexicon.
Half-hours with the best writers of Enjiflish

verse and prose, excluding thing-um-bob.
A little printing-press.
A Bible.

The Elements of Jurisprudence.
A compact travelling medicine chest.
A collection of seeds, with
A pamphlet that should accompany these, and
Two Pigs.

" These last also were saved in the Ark, as
witness Holy Writ, and one of them later
accompanied St. Anthony, and is his ritual
beast on every monument."

" But all this," said the Sailor, as he began
eating his bacon, "tells us nothing of the
curing of pigs, which art, you say, is a proof
of man's original instruction, and of the in-
tentions of Providence.

Myself. "And I said it very truly, for
how of himself could man have discovered
such a thing ? There is revelation about it,

THE DEAD PIG CURED 109

and the seeming contradiction which inhabits
all mysterious gifts."

Grizzlebeard. "You mean that there is
no curing a pig until the pig is dead ? For
though that is the very moment when our
materialists would say that he was past all
healing, yet (oh, marvel !) that is the very
time most suitable for curing him."

The Poet. " Well, but beyond the theology
of the matter, will you not tell us how a
pig is cured, for I long to learn one useful
thing in my life."

Myself. " You will not learn it in the mere
telling for what says the Philosopher ? * If
you would be a Carpenter you must do Car-
penter's work.' However, for the enduring
affection I bear you, and also for my delight
in the art, I will expound this thing.

" First, then, you cut your pig in two, and
lay each half evenly and fairly upon a smooth
well-washed board of deal, oak, ash, elm,
walnut, teak, mahogany, ebony, rosewood,
or any other kind of wood ; and then, taking
one such half you put by on one side a
heap of saltpetre, and gathering a handful of

no THE MANNER OF

this saltpetre you very diligently rub it into
the flesh, and, rubbing, have a care to rub
it rubbedly, as rub should, and show your-
self a master rubber at rubbing. And all
this you must do on the inside and not on
the out, for that is all covered over with
hair.

" When, therefore, you have so rubbed in
a rubbard manner until your rubment is aglow
with the rubbing, why then desist ; hang up
your half pig on a hook from a beam, and
wash your hands and have done for that
day.

** But next day you must begin again in
the same manner (having first consecrated
your work by a prayer), and so on for thirty
days; but each day a little less than the
last, until, before the curing is ended, you
are taking but a tithe of the saltpetre you
took at the beginning.

" When all this is over your half pig is
as stiff as a prude, and as salt as sorrow, and
as incorruptible as a lawyer, and as tough as
Tacitus. Then may you lift it up all of one
piece, like a log, and put it to smoke over

CURING A PIG 111

a wood fire, as the giants did in old time,
or you may pack it between clean layers of
straw, as the Germans do to this day, or
you may do whatever you will, and be
damned to it ; for no matter what you do,
you will still have a pig of pigs, and a pork
perfect, that has achieved its destiny and
found the fruit of its birth : a scandal to
Mahound, and food for Christian men."

The Sailor. " All that you say is true
enough, but what of the bristles of the pig ?
What of his hair ? Are not bristles better
in brushes than in bacon ? "

Myself. " You speak truth soundly, though
perhaps a little sharply, when you ask, ' How
about hair?' For the pig, like all brutes,
differs from man in this, that his hide is
covered vidth hair. On which theme also the
poet Wordsworth, or some such fellow, com-
posed a poem which, as you have not previ-
ously heard it, let me now tell you (in the
fashion of Burnand) I shall at once proceed
to relate ; and I shall sing it in that sort of
voice called by Italians ' The Tenore Stridente,'
but by us a Hearty Stave."

112 THE SONG CALLED "HIS HIDE

" The dog is a faithful, intelligent friend,
But his hide is covered with hair ;
The cat will inhabit the house to the end.
But her hide is covered with hair.

" The hide of the mammoth was covered with wool.
The hide of the porpoise is sleek and cool.
But you'll find, if you look at that gambolling fool.
That his hide is covered with hair.

" Oh, I thank my God for this at the least,
I was bom in the West and not in the East,
And He made me a human instead of a beast.
Whose hide is covered with hair ! "

Grizzlebeard {with interest). " This song is
new to me, although I know most songs. Is
it your own ? "

Myself. " Why, no, it's a translation, but a
free one I admit, from Anacreon or Theo-
critus, I forget which. . . . What am I say-
ing ? Is it not Wordsworth's, as we said
just now ? There is so much of his that is
but little known ! Would you have further
verses ? There are many ..."

IS COVERED WITH HAIR" 118

The Sailor. *'No."

Myself. " Why, then, I will immediately
continue.

" The cow in the pasture that chews the cud,
Her hide is covered with hair."

The Sailor. "Halt!"

** And even a horse of the Barbary blood.
His hide is covered with hair !

" The camel excels in a number of ways.
And travellers give him unlimited praise —
He can go without drinking for several days —
But his hide is covered with hair."

G?izzlebeard. " How many verses are there
of this ? "

Myself'. " There are a great number. For
all the beasts of the field, and creeping things,
and furred creatures of the sea come into this
song, and towards the end of it the Hairy Ainu
himself. There are hundreds upon hundreds
of verses.

" The bear of the forest that lives in a pit.
His hide is covered with hair ;
The laughing hyena in spite of his wit.
His hide is covered with hair !

114 THE AUTHORSHIP

" The Barbary ape and the chimpanzee.
And the lion of Africa, verily he.
With his head like a wig, and the tuft on his knee.
His hide . . ."

Grizzleheard (rising). *' Enough ! Enough !
These songs, which rival the sea-serpent in
length, are no part of the true poetic spirit,
and I cannot believe that the conscientious
Wordsworth, surnamed tVxo/ce'^aXof, or Horse
Face, wrote this, nor even that it is any true
translation of Anacreon or the shining Theo-
critus. There is some error! This manner
of imagining a theme, to which innumerable
chapters may be added in a similar vein, is
no part of poetry ! It is rather a camp-habit,
worthy only of a rude soldiery, to help them
along the road and under the heavy pack.
For I can understand that in long marches
men should have to chant such endless things
with a pad and a beat of the foot to them,
but not we. I say enough, and enough I "

I answered him, getting up also as he had,
and making ready for the road. " Why,
Grizzleheard, this is not very kind of you,
for though you had allowed me but fifteen

OF THE SONG 115

verses more I could have got through the
Greater Carnivoise, and perhaps, before the
closure, we could have brought in the Wart
Hog, who loves not war, but is a Pacifist."

The Poet {rising also). " It may be so, good
Myself, but remember that you bear them all
in store. Nothing is really lost. You will
rediscover these verses in eternity, and no
doubt your time in hell will be long enough
to exhaust, in series, all the animals that ever
were."

The Sailor (rising last). " Grizzlebeard has
saved us all 1 "

With this condemnation of a noble song
they moved out of doors on to the road, a
little aimlessly, gazing out towards the high
Downs, under the now bright-burnished
moon, and doubtful whither they should
proceed. Grizzlebeard proposed in a gentle
fashion that we should go on to an inn at
Bramber and sleep there, but the Sailor
suddenly said, " No I "

He said it with such violence and determi-
nation that we were all surprised, and looked
at him with fear. Then he went on :

116 A FUGUE ON THE

" No, we will not go to the inn at Bramber,
nor breathe upon embers which are now so
nearly extinguished ; we will not go and
walk in the woods whence all the laurels have
been cut away, nor will we return to emotions
which in their day were perhaps but vaguely
divine, but which the lapse of time has ren-
dered sacred. It is the most perilous of human
endeavours, is this attempt to return to the
past ; should it fail, it breeds the most woeful
of human woes. I know as well as you the
gardens of Bramber, and I, too, have sat
there eating and drinking upon summer even-
ings between the last light and the dark. I,
too, have watched a large star that began to
show above Buttolph Combe; and I, also,
have seen the flitter-mice darting above me
in an air like bronze. Believe me, I have
heard the nightingale in Bramber, but I will
not return."

The Poet "But 1"

The Sailor. "Be silent! ... I will not
return. ... It was the best of inns ! . . .
You talk of the inn at Saint Girons, where
the wine was good in the days of Arthur

INNS OF THE WORLD 117

Young, and is still good to-day — not the same
wine, but the grandson of the same wine —
and you speak favourably of that inn under
the pass coming in from Val Carlos. You
talk justly of the famous inn at Urgel, known
as the Universal Inn, from which a man can
watch under a full moon the vast height of
the Sierra del Cadi; and you perpetually re-
peat the praises of the inn at the Sign of the
Chain of Gold, under a large ruined castle, by
a broad and very peaceful river in Normandy.
You do well to praise them, but all these inns
together could not even stand at the knees of
what was once the inn at Bramber."

Myself. "I have never mentioned one of
these inns 1 "

The Sailor, "There is not upon earth so
good a thing as an inn ; but even among
good things there must be hierarchy. The
angels, they say, go by steps, and I am very
ready to believe it. It is true also of inns.
It is not for a wandering man to put them in
their order ; but in my youth the best inn of
the inns of the world was an inn forgotten in
the trees of Bramber. It is on this account

(1,665) J

118 A FUGUE ON THE

that I will not return. The famous Tuscan
inns have tempted many men to praise them,
some (as I think) extravagantly. And of the
lesser inns of seaports sailors (though they
never praise in prose or verse) know and speak
of the Star of Yarmouth — I mean of Great
Yarmouth — and the County Inn of the other
Yarmouth — I mean of Little Yarmouth —
and especially in loud voices do they commend
the Dolphin at Southampton, which is a very
noble inn with bow windows, and second to
no house in the world for the opportunity of
composing admirable verse and fluent prose.
Then also, lying inland one day's march from
the sea, how many inns have not sailors
known I Is there not the Bridge Inn of Am-
berley and the White Hart of Storrington,
the Spread Eagle of Midhurst, that oldest and
most revered of all the prime inns of this
world, and the White Hart of Steyning and
the White Horse of Storrington and the
Swan of Petworth, all of which it may
be our business to see ? They were mortal
inns, human inns, full of a common and
a reasonable good ; but round the inn at

INNS OF THE WORLD 119

Bramber, my companions, there hangs a
very different air. Memory bathes it and
the drift of time, and the perpetual ob-
session of youth. So let us leave it there.
I will put up the picture of an early love ; I
will hear with mixed sorrow and delight the
songs that filled my childhood ; but I will not
deliberately view that which by a process of
sanctification through time has come to be
hardly of this world. I will not go sleep in
the inn at Bramber — the gods forbid me.

" Nay, apart from all of this which you
three perhaps (and especially the Poet) are
not of a stuff to comprehend, apart from
these rare and mysterious considerations, I
say, there is an evident and an easy reason
for not stirring the leaves of memory. Who
knows that we should find it the same ? Who
knows that the same voices would be heard
in that garden, or that the green paint on the
tables would still be dusty, blistered, and
old ? That the chairs would still be rickety,
and that cucumber would still be the prin-
cipal ornament of the feast? Have you not
learnt in your lives, you two that are one

120 A FUGUE ON THE

young, one middle-aged, and you, the third,
who are quite old, have you not learnt how
everything is a function of motion; how aU
things only exist because they change ? And
what purpose would it serve to shock once
more that craving of the soul for certitude
and for repose? With what poignant and
terrible grief should we not wrestle if the
contrast of that which was once the inn at
Bramber should rise a terrible ghost and
challenge that which is the inn at Bramber
now I Of what it was and what it has become
might there not rise a dual picture before our
minds — a picture that should torture us with
the doom of time? I will not play with
passions that are too strong for men ; I will
not go sleep to-night at the inn of Bramber.

" Is not the world full of other inns wherein
a man can sleep deeply and wake as it were
in a new world ? Has not heaven set for us,
like stars in the sky, these points of isolation
and repose all up and down the fields of
Christendom ? Is there not an inn at the
Land's End where you can lie awake in a rest
that is better than slumber, listening to the

INNS OF THE WORLD 121

noise of the sea upon the Longships and to
the Atlantic wind ? And is there not another
inn at John o' Groats to which you may
bicycle if you choose (but so shall not I) ?
Is there not the nameless inn famous for its
burgundy in Llanidloes ? Is there no Uni-
corn in Machynlleth? Are there not in
Dolgelly forty thousand curious inns and
strong? And what of the Feathers at Lud-
low, where men drink so often and so deeply
after the extinguishing of fires, and of its
sister inn at Ledbury? And what of the
New Inn at Gloucester, which is older than the
New College at Oxford or the New Bridge at
Paris ? And by the way, if Oxford itself have
no true inns, are there not inns hanging like
planets in a circle round the town ? The inns
of Eynsham, of Shillingford, of Dorchester, of
Abingdon, the remarkable inn at Nuneham,
and the detestable inn at Wheatley which fell
from grace some sixty years ago, and now
clearly stands for a mark of reprobation to
show what inns may become, when, though
possessed of free will and destined to eternal
joy, they fail to fulfil their hostelarian destiny.

122 A FUGUE ON THE

. . . Yes, indeed, there are inns enough in
the world among which to choose without
being forced by evil fate or still more evil
curiosity to pull out in the organ of the soul
the deep but — oh ! the fast and inviolable —
the forbidden stops of resurrection and of
accomplished loving. For no man may re-live
his youth, nor is love fruitful altogether to
man."

Grizzlebeard (musing). " If it were not so
far I should proceed this very night to the
Station Hotel at York, which of all the
houses 1 know is the largest and the most
secure."

The Poet. " And I to the Fish, Dog, and
Duck where the Ouse comes in to the Cam,
or to the Grapes on the hills above Cor-
bridge before you venture upon the loneliness
of Northumberland ; both excellent inns."

Myself. "But I, to the sign of the Lion,
up on Arun, which no man knows but me.
There should I approach once more the
ancient riddle, and hear, perhaps, at last, the
voices of the dead, and know the dooms of
the soul."

INNS OF THE WORLD 123

The Sailor. " You would all three do well.
For inns are as men and women are, with
character and fate infinitely diversified, and
to one an old man goes for silence and repose,
to another a younger man for adventure or
for isolation, to a third a poet for no reason
save to lay up a further store of peevish
impotence, which is the food upon which these
half-men commonly feed. So also there are
inns coquettish, inns brutal, inns obvious, inns
kindly, and inns strong — each is for a mood.
But as in every life there is one emotion
which may not be touched and to which the
common day is not sufficient, so with inns.
For me one is thus sacred, which is that inn
at Bramber. Thither therefore, as I think I
have said before, I will not go."

Myself. "Now that all the affectation of
your talk is spent, 1 may tell you that you
might have saved your breath, for close at
hand I kndw of a little house, empty but well
furnished and full of stores for winter. Sailor
— I say this to you — the Trolls are not my
friends. Yet of such little houses all up and
down the County I alone possess the keys.

124 WE COME TO A

We will go, then, to this httle house of mine,
for it is not a mile across the water-meadows."
This we did, and as we passed the wooden
bridge we saw below us my Uttle river, the river
Adur, slipping at low tide towards the sea.

So we went on over the water-meadows.
It was very cold, and the moon rode over
Chanctonbury in a clear heaven. We did
not speak. We plodded on all four, in single
file, myself leading, along the .narrow path by
the bare hedge-side. The frost had touched
the grass, and the twigs of quickset were
sharp in the moonlight like things engraved
upon metal. We came out upon the Ashurst
road. The mill was all sound in those days,
and the arms of it stood against the sky.
We walked abreast, but still in silence: the
Poet slouched and Grizzlebeard let his stick
trail along the ground, and even the Sailor
had a melancholy air, though his strong legs
carried him well. As for me I still pressed
onwards a little ahead of the line, for I
knew my goal near at hand, while for my
three companions it was but an aimless

LITTLE HOUSE I KNOW 125

trudge through the darkness after a long
day's journey. So did we near that little
house which God knows 1 love as well as
any six or seven little houses in the world.

We came to the foot of a short hill: tall
elms stood out against the sky a short way
back from the road and beyond a little green.
Beneath them shone the thatch of a vast
barn, and next it a sight which I knew very
well . . . the roof and chimney. I turned
from the road to cross the green, and I took
from my pocket a great key, and when my
companions saw this their merriment returned
to them, for they knew that I had found
the shelter.

Grizzlebeard said : " Look how all doors
in the County open to you ! "

" Not all," I answered, " but certainly four
or five."

I turned the key in the lock, and there,
within, when I had struck a match, appeared
the familiar room. The beam of the ceiling
was a friend to me and the great down- fire-
place inhabited the room. There, in that
recess, lay on the dogs and the good pile of

126 THAT INN CALLED

ashes, a faggot and four or five huge logs of
cord wood, of oak from the clay of the Weald :
I lit beneath all these a sheaf of verse I
had carried about for months, but which had
disappointed me, and the flames leapt up,
in shape like leaves of holly. It was a good
sight to see.

With the fire humanity returned ; we talked,
we spread our hands ; one pulled the curtains
over the long low window of the room, another
brought the benches near the blaze, benches
with high backs and dark with age ; another
put the boards on the trestles before it;
another lit two candles and stood them in
their own grease upon the boards. We were
in a new mood, being come out of the night
and seeing the merriment of the fire.

Next we would send to the Fountain for
drink. For the inn of Ashurst is called the
Fountain Inn. It is not the Fountain called
the " Fount of Gold " of which it is written —

" This is that water from the Fount of Gold —
Water of youth and washer out of cares."

The Fountain of Ashurst runs, by God's
grace, with better stuff than water.

THE FOUNTAIN INN 127

Nor is it that other Fountain which is
called

" Fountain of years and water of things done."

For though there are honourable years round
the Fountain of Ashurst, yet most certainly
there are no regrets. It is not done for yet.
Binge ! Fountain, binge !

Nor is it the Fountain of Vaucluse, nor
that of Moulton Parva or Thames -head,
which ran dry when George III. died and
has never run since : nor the Bandusian
Spring. No, nor Helicon, which has been
tapped so often that it gave out about thirty-
five years ago, and has been muddy ever since.

Nor is it of those twin fountains, of hot
water the one and of cold the other, where
the women of Troy were wont to wash their
linen in the old days of peace ere ever Greek
came to the land.

No, it was none of these but the plain
Fountain of Ashurst, and thither did we plan
to send for bread and cheese and for ale with
which this fountain flows.

As for whom we should send, it was a

128 THE SAILOR IS SENT

selection. Not Grizzlebeard, out of the re-
spect for age, but one of the other three.
Not I, because I alone knew the house, and
was busy arranging all, but one of the other
two. Not the Poet, because, all suddenly,
the Muse had him by the gullet and was
tearing him. Already he was writing hard,
and had verse almost ready for us, and said
that this sort of cooking should not be
disturbed.

Therefore it was the Sailor who was sent,
though he hated the thought of the cold.

He rose up and said : " When in any
company one man is found more courageous
and more merry, more manly, more just, and
more considerate, stronger, wiser, and much
more holy than his peers, very generous also,
yet firm and fixed in purpose, of good counsel,
kind, and with a wide, wide heart, then if
(to mention smaller things) he is also of the
most acute intelligence and the most powerful
in body of them all, it is he that is made the
drudge and the butt of the others."

With that he left us, carrying a great
two gallon can, and soon returned with it

TO THE FOUNTAIN 129

full of Steyning ale, and as he put it down he
said : *' The Fountain runs, but not with com-
mon water. It shall become famous among
Fountains, for I shall speak of it in rhyme."
Then he struck the Poet a hearty blow, and
asked after the health of his poem.

TJie Poet. " It is not quite completed."
The Sailor (sitting down near the fire and
pouring out the ale). " It is better so I Let
us have no filling up of gaps. Beware of
perfection. It is a will-o'-the-wisp. It has
been the ruin of many."

Grizzlebeard. " Is there a tune ? "
The Poet. " There is a sort of dirge."
Myself. '* Begin to sing."
The Poet—

" Attend, my gentle brethren of the Weald,
Whom now the frozen field
Does with his caking shell your labour spurn.
And turn your shares and turn
Your cattle homeward to their lazy byres ; "

The Sailor. " Oh I Lord I It is a dirge I
The man chaunts like old Despair on a fast
day ! Come let us "

Myself. "No, the Poet must end; let him
continue."

130 AND A THRENODY

The Poet, when he had looked reproach-
fully at the Sailor, filled his lungs a little
fuller than before, and went on :

" Your cattle homeward to their lazy byres ;
Oh ! gather round our fires
And point a stave or scald a cleanly chum
The while

With ritual strict and nice observance near,
We weave in decent rhyme
A Threnody for the Departing Year."

The Sailor. " ' Decent ' is bad ; and you
cannot have a threnody for something that is
not dead."

The Poet {continuing) —

" And you that since the weary world began.
Subject and dear to man.
Have made a living noise about our homes.
You cows and geese and pigs and sheep and

all the crew
Of mice and coneys too

And hares and all that ever lurks and roams
From Harting all the way to Bodiam bend.
Attend '

It is a solemn time.
And we assembled here
Advance in honourable rhyme
With ritual strict and nice observance near
Our Threnody for the Departing Year.
The year shall pass, and yet again the year
Shall on our reeds return
The tufted reeds to hurrying Arun dear. . . ,"

IS CHAUNTED 181

Here the Poet stopped and looked at the fire.

" Have you made an end ? " said the Sailor
with a vast affectation of solicitude.

"I have stopped," said the Poet, "but I
have not finished."

" Why, then," said the Sailor, *' let me help
you on," and he at once began impromptu :

" As I was passing up your landing towns
I heard how in the South a goddess lay."

Then he added : " I can't go on."
The Poet—

" She ends our little cycle with a pall."

Grizzlebeard. " Who does ? "

The Poet. " Why, that goddess of his ; I
shall put her in and make her wind it up.
The Sailor is not the only man here who can
compose ofF-hand. I promise you . . .

" She ends our little cycle with a pall :
The winter snow — the winter snow shall reverently

fall
On our beloved lands.
As on Marana dead a winding sheet
Was laid to hide the smallness of her hands.
And her lips virginal :
Her virginal white feet."

When that dirge had sunk and they, as

132 THE DEAD REVISIT

they sat or lay before the fire, had nodded
one by one, sleep came upon them all three,
weary with the long day's going and the
keenness of the air. They had in their minds,
that All Hallowe'en as sleep took them, the
Forest of the high -land and the great Weald
all spread below and the road downward into
it, and our arrival beneath the nightly majesty
of the Downs. They took their rest before
the fire.

But I was still wakeful, all alone, remem-
bering All-Hallows and what dancing there
was in the woods that night, though no
man living might hear the music, or see
the dancers go. 1 thought the fire- lit dark-
ness was alive. So I slipped to the door very
quietly, covering the latch with my fingers to
dumb its noise, and I went out and watched
the world.

The moon stood over Chanctonbury, so
removed and cold in her silver that you
might almost have thought her careless of the
follies of men ; little clouds, her attendants,
shone beneath her worshipping, and they
presided together over a general silence. Her

MEN IN DREAMS 138

light caught the edges of the Downs. There
was no mist. She was still frosty-clear when
I saw her set behind those hills. The stars
were more brilliant after her setting, and deep
quiet held the valley of Adur, my little river,
slipping at low tide towards the sea.

When I had seen all this I went back within
doors, as noiselessly as I had come out, and I
picked through the sleepers to my own place,
and I wrapped myself in my cloak before the
fire. Sleep came at last to me also ; but that
night dead friends visited me in dreams.

(1,655)

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THE FIRST OF NOVEMBER

1902

THE FIRST OF NOVEMBER

1902

Next morning
when I woke
it was because
the Poet was
timidly walk-
ing about the
room, making as
much noise as he
dared, but unwill-
ing to be longer
alone.
The fire was out, and the
small place looked mournful
under that grey dawn. I
could see through the win-
dow that the weather had
changed and the air was warmer. All the

138 THE BREAKFASTING OF

sky was hurrying cloud, and there would
be ram I thought from one time to another
on that day. But it would be a good day
I thought, for it was All-Hallows, which
balances the year, and makes a counter-
weight, as it were, to All Fools' in her earlier
part, when she is light and young, and when
she has forgotten winter and is glad that
summer is near, and has never heard the name
of autumn at all, or of the faU of leaves.

Grizzlebeard also stirred and woke, and
then, last, the Sailor, rather stupored, and all
of them looked at me as much as to say:
" Have you no breakfast here ? " But I,
seeing what was in their minds, met them
at once determinedly, and said :

** In this house we breakfast after the
fashion of the heroes, our fathers, that is,
upon last night's beer, and the bread and
cheese of our suppers. So did they breakfast
who fought with De Montfort up on Mount
Harry at the other end of the county six
hundred years ago and more, when they had
marched all the day before as it was, and
were marshalled against the king with the

OUR FATHERS 189

morning. Sorely against their will ! For
there is no fight in a man until it is past
nine o'clock, and even so he is the better for
coffee or for soup. But to-day there is no
fighting, but only trudging, so let us make
our breakfast thus and be off."

They were none of them content, but since
I would have it so and since there was no
help for it, they drank that stale beer, a mug
each, with wry faces, and nibbled a little at
the stale bread. Then we left the rest of the
loaf and the cheese for the mice, who keep
house for me there when I am away, and
frighten off new-comers by pretending that
they are the spirits of the dead.

So we went out through the door and
across the little green to a wobble road that
is there, and by a way across the fields to
Steyning, where we should find the high
road to Washington and Storrington and
Amberley Bridge, and so over to the country
beyond Arun and the things we knew.

As we went south over those fields, with
the new warmth of the hurrying clouds above
us and the Downs growing higher and higher,

140 THE CURSING OF

the Poet saying what the others had spared
to say, began to grumble. For he said that
beer was no breakfast for a man, but give
him rather tea.

The Sailor. " Poet, 1 think you must be a
vegetarian, and very probably (like most men
of your luxury) you are yet afraid of your
body — a lanky thing, I grant."

Myself. " Burn me those men who are
afraid of the Flesh ! Water-drinkers also, and
caterwauling outers, and turnip mumblers,
enemies of beef, treasonable to the imme-
morial ox and the tradition of our human
kind ! Pifflers and snifflers, and servants of
the meanest of the devils, tied fast to halting,
knock-kneed Baphomet, the coward's god,
and chained to the usurers as is a mangy
dog to a blind man I "

The Sailor. " Come, let us take it up I
Hunt me them over the hills with horn and
with hound ! Drive them, harry them, pen
them, drown them in the river, and rid me
them from our offended soil ! They are the
betrayers of Christendom I They are the
traducers of those mighty men our fathers,

THE WATER-DRINKERS 141

who upon the woodwork of the Table and
the Bed, as upon twin pillars, founded the
Commonweal."

Myself. *' Come, Poet, are you not con-
vinced ? "

The Poet. " Of what ? That I should have
a decent respect for my body ? "

The Sailor. " Respect go hang itself by the
heels until it gets some blood into its pale face,
and then take a basting to put life into it ! "

Grizzlebeard. "Do you not know. Poet,
that by all these anti-belly tricks of yours you
would canalise mankind into the trench that
leads to hell? For there is nothing that
cannot be made to serve the Master of Evil
by abuse, nor anything which cannot by a
just and reasonable enjoyment be made to
glorify God. Have you any lack of pleasure
in this rush of the clouds above us. Or does
he seem to you a niggler, the fellow that
rides the south-west wind ? "

The Poet. " What is all this flood of yours,
you three? What have I said about or
against the Body ? "

Myself. "Nay, Poet, but we will tell you

142 LITTLE BODY I

more than you care to hear! Consider that
glorious great tube a gun, whence shells may
be lobbed at such as are worthy of the game.
Your man that smirks his hatred of war is he
that potters into the dirty adventures against
the very weak (but by God's providence his
aim is damnable), and he is the man that
fees lawyers to ruin the poor."

The Sailor. " What all this may have to do
with the Body! know not. But this I say : Give
it due honour — treat it well, keep it with care.
It is a complicated thing — you could not have
made it, and if you hurt it it is hard to mend.
. . . Oh, my succinct and honourable Body I
I cherish you ! you are my friend ! I cannot
do without you ! On the day I have to do
without you I shall be all at sea ! With the
eyes in you do I read books written by women
with a grievance, and with the ears of you do
I hear the noise of the vulgarians, and with
the feet of you do I enter the houses of the
rich but fly the presence of fools ! Most pro-
fitable, consistent, homogeneous, and worthy
Body ! I salute you ; I take comfort in you ;
I am glad indeed they gave you to me for

LITTLE BODY! 148

this brief mortal while ! Little Body I Little
Body I Believe me, were I wealthy I would
cram you with good things ! Nor was I
ever better pleased than when I heard from
a Franciscan in Crawley that when they
hang me I shall not lose you altogether, but
that you will return to me some time or
another; — but when exactly was never fully
set down. Anyhow, I shall catch on to you
again and recover you very properly set up
and serviceable, without bump or boss, a
humpless, handsome thing ! "

The Poet. " All this is quite beside the mark,
and you have vented upon me nothing but
your temper for lack of breakfast. Never in
my life have I believed the things which you
would have me believe, nor said a word
against this vessel which holds my soul as
tight as a bottle does a cork, and of which
I know so much, but of my soul so little,
though my soul is my only companion."

Grizzlebeard. *' The Body is a business which
we all know too well, but the Soul is another
matter. For I knew a man once (not of
this county) who said there was no soul, and

144 THERE IS A SOUL

would have proved it. He had once long
ago by an apparatus of his tried to prove
there was a soul — but the proof was lacking.
So next he naturally thought there could be
no soul, and he set out to prove that on his
four fingers and his thumb, without gim-
cracks, pragmatically, and in a manner con-
vincing to the blind. And he set out with
an apparatus to find proof that there was
no soul — but that proof was also lacking.
So let us have done with all this, and find
our way through this tall screen of trees to
Steyning, and to the good house that is
there, and have something Christian to pre-
pare us for our road. For the Lord knows that
Myself and Queen Elizabeth were wrong in
making small, stale beer and bread a proper
breakfast for a man. Strong beer and beef
are the staple."

The Sailor. *' Besides which All-Hallows is
a great feast, and feeding goes with feasting.
We will knock at Myself s door when we are
next worried by the duty of fasting for some
great evil to be atoned, or when ugly Lent
comes round."

THE HIDEOUS BEING 145

When we had got into the town of Steyn-
ing, the Sailor, the Poet, Grizzlebeard, and
I, we went into the inn, hotel, guest-house,
or hostelry, and there very prettily asked as
we passed the host that cold meat and ale
might be served us in the smoking-room.

But when we got into the smoking-room,
the Sailor, the Poet, Grizzlebeard, and I, we
were not a little annoyed to see in a corner of
the room, crouched up against the fire in a
jolly old easy-chair, which little suited his
vile and scraggy person, a being of an un-
pleasant sort. He had a hump which was
not his fault, and a sour look which was.
He was smoking a long churchwarden pipe
through his sneering lips. There was very
little hair upon his face, though he did not
shave, and the ear turned towards us, the left
ear, had been so broken that it looked pointed,
and made one shudder. The sneer on his lips
was completed by the long slyness of his eye.
His legs were as thin as sticks, and he had
one crossed over the other ; his boots had
elastic sides to them, and horrible tags fore
and aft, and above them were measly grey

146 THE HIDEOUS BEING

socks thin and wrinkled. He did not turn
nor greet us as we appeared.

It was our fashion during this memorable
walk to be courteous with all men and familiar
with none — unless you call that familiarity
when the Poet threw beer at a philosopher to
baptize him and wake him into a new world,
as you shall later read.

We therefore sat awkwardly round the
edges of the table, the Poet at the end of
it opposite to the window that gives on the
stable-yard, Myself next to him at the corner,
next to me the Sailor, and beyond him
Grizzlebeard, who seemed the most contented
of us all, and was in no way put out by
the blasted being near the fire, but rather
steeped himself in memories of his own, and
had eyes that looked further than the walls.
We, the younger men, drummed our fingers
a little upon the table till the beer was
brought in, and then began to wonder what
wines were kept in so old a house, and the
Poet and the Sailor alternately told lies ; the
Poet telling of rare wines he had found in the
houses of the rich, the Sailor talking of wines

THE HIDEOUS BEING 147

that never were in ports far off beyond the
wide peril of the seas. Grizzlebeard, hearing
them confusedly, said that his father had
bought a Tokay in 1849 at 204s. the dozen.
This also was a He. And I, to please them,
spoke of true wines, notably of that wine
which comes from the inside of a goat-skin
in Val d'Aran, Sobrarbe, and the roots of
Aragon : the vilest and most tonic wine in
the world, alive with the power of the goat.

While we thus spoke (in a quiet way so
as not to offend) the beer came in, and our
talk drifted on to the price of wines, and
from that to those who could afford the
price of wine, and from that to the rich,
and from that to the very rich. And at
last the Poet said :

" I should like to be very rich."

Whereupon, to the annoyance of us all,
the nasty fellow next to the fire took his
long, silly pipe out of his mouth, blew a
little blue wisp of smoke without body in
it from his lips, and said :

" Ugh ! What do you call very rich ? "

The Poet was by nature a hesitating man,

148 THE HIDEOUS BEING

and he was frightened by one speaking to
him unexpectedly — and one so hideous I So
he said vaguely :

" Oh I not to have to think of things ; and
not to be for ever in the jeopardy of honour ;
to be able to dip when one liked into one's ,
purse and to pay for what one wanted, and
to succour the needy, and to travel or rest
at pleasure." Then he added, as men will
who are of infinite imagination and crammed
with desires, " My wants are few."

He was thinking, perhaps, of a great house
upon an eastern hill that should overlook the
Mediterranean Sea, and yet be easily in touch
with London, and yet again be wholly iso-
lated from the world, and have round it just
so many human beings as he might wish to
have there, and all at his command.

I, sitting next to him, took up the con-
versation as in a game of cards, and began :

" That can't be done ! When you are wish-
ing for wealth you are by the nature of things
wishing for what man allows and controls.
You are wishing, therefore "

*' Don't preach I " said the Person by the

THE HIDEOUS BEING 149

fire. The Sailor, to make things pleasanter,
began hurriedly ;

"If I were very rich I should want a
number of definite things, as this gentle-
man said," waving his hands towards that
gentleman to avoid all unpleasantness, which
is a way they have in the foc'sle.

"He didn't say it," I murmured. ** I
said it."

Whereat the Sailor kicked vigorously and
wide under the table by way of hint, and
caught the Poet, who howled aloud. Then
only was the Person by the fire moved to
a single gesture. He looked round sharply
with his head and a twist of his eyes, not
changing a muscle of his body, but glanc-
ing as an animal glances, and moving as an
animal moves.

" Go on 1" he commanded.

The Sailor was a combative man: but he
mastered himself, and went on gradually ;

" Oh I I should like to give big dinners
pretty often and to go to plays."

Which was a silly sentence, but true
enough. He corrected it, adding:

(1,65&) L

150 THE HIDEOUS BEING

"And I should like to have a jolly little
house, and five or ten or twenty or thirty, or
perhaps a hundred acres of land; and there
would have to be wood upon it. And I
should hate to be near a railway, so I
would have a motor; and I must have a
telephone, but it must not bring people to
the place, so I would have a private tele-
phone wire stretching for miles. And one
must have water on one's place. And I
should like electric light for the offices, but
one wants candles for the rooms."

When he had got thus far the man near
the fire jerked his head over his shoulder at
Grizzlebeard. The Sailor stopped astonished,
and Grizzlebeard, a little frightened I think,
said rapidly :

'* Really, I don't know I I don't think I
want to be very rich. I suppose I am very
rich by any good standard. My house has
twenty-three rooms in it, counting the old
scullery, which is now a cellar. And I
have quite four acres of dug garden -land,
and undug land not to be counted. I am
a gentleman also, and I can put up as

THE HIDEOUS BEING 151

many of my friends as care to come and
see me. I have four horses, money in the
bank, and no debts. I burn my own wood,
and build with my own timber ; and I
quarry my stone out of my own ground.
Really I need no more ! "

He remembered something, however, and
he said :

" It would be a good thing to help the
nations. It would be a good thing to en-
franchise the nations which are caught in
the usurer's hellish web."

He was silent. Many memories moved in
him, but he was too old to think that much
could be done with the world ; and how could
money do much against the abominations of
the world ?

It was the Sailor who found courage
enough to tackle the Johnnie in the chair.

" And what would you do," he said aggres-
sively, " if you were very rich ? "

The Man in the Chair did not move.

" I am talking to you, sir," said the Sailor
sharply.

** I know that," snarled the Man in the

152 THE HIDEOUS BEING

Chair in an inhuman way. Then, just be-
fore the Sailor exploded, he added,

" I should sit here in this chair smoking this
pipe with this very tobacco in it and looking
at this very fire. Thafs what I should do,
and there would be you four men behind
me."

** Oh, you would, would you ? " said the
SaUor. " And how do you know that you
would be just as you are?"

" Because I am very rich already," said
the Man in the Chair in a low metaUic voice,
fuU of dirty satisfaction. ..." I am exceed-
ingly rich. I have more money than any
other man in the large town of the north
where I was born. Yes, I'm rich enough."

He leaned forward towards the fire for a
moment, then he took out a card and tossed
it to the Sailor.

" That's my name," he said. And we bade
him " Good day," and all went out.

We took the road so as not to go through
Wiston Park, for though the house there is
as good a sight as any in England, why, it
was not ours, and we went past that field

THE WHEELBARROW SAINT 153

where the Saint wheeled his mother in a
wheelbarrow, and cursed the haymakers, so
that it always rains there in mowing time.

For he was, as the phrase goes in those
parts, a Holy Man, and had great power.
But as he was very poor, no one guessed it.
And first, in following God, he sold his motor
to buy a brougham, and then he sold his
brougham to buy a dog-cart, and then he sold
his dog-cart to buy a broken down, paint-
scratched, nasty go-cart ; and then, still serv-
ing God, not man, he sold his go-cart and his
nag and bought a wheelbarrow. For some
thing he must have to take his old mother
to church in. Now all this happened in
the year of our Lord 713, just after Sussex
got the Faith and hundreds of years before
she lost it again, and a little before St.
Leonard cursed the nightingales.

So he was taking his mother to church in
the wheelbarrow when the haymakers laughed
at him as he passed, and the Saint said :
" Laugh men, weep heaven." And immedi-
ately there fell on that field only two inches
of rain in half-an-hour, and that on the two-

154 THE HIDEOUS MAN'S NAME

day swathes all ready for Tedding, and Lord I
how they did curse and swear! And from
that day to this, whether hay time come in
May month or in June, it rains in the hay time
on that one field.

Now when we had gone about a mile from
Steyning and had so turned into the Wash-
ington Road, the Sailor bethought him of
the card, and pulled it out, and there was
written —

Mr. Deusipsenotaviti

Brooks's.

The Sailor looked at it right away up, and
upside down, and sideways, and held it up
to the light so as to look through it as well,
and then said :

" It is a foreign name."

Grizzlebeard took it from him, and after a
close view of it said :

" It is a Basque name : it is agglutinative."

And we all went on to Washington, talking
of a thousand things.

THE GOOD RAIN 155

As we so talked there came over the edge
of the high hills that stood like a wall above
us, and from the hurrying clouds before the
south-west wind, the first drops of rain, and
the Poet said :

" What ! Must we go forward on this road
although it is raining ? "

The Sailor. "Yes, Ninny-lad, most cer-
tainly I What else were roads made for but
to give a man hard going over wet land ? "

The Poet. " Well, I say there is a time for
everything, and rain-time is not the time for
walking on a road."

The Sailor. ** Why, then, you mean that
autumn days, such as these, are not to be
taken at their full measure, nor to give us
their full profit, but that we are to go down
to dry death without knowing the taste of
Sussex air in the rain ? "

The Poet. " No, I say it aloud, there are
days for everything, although we do not
know the reason why, and that is why I never
will be shaved on a Sunday, for I count it
unlucky.

" You may have noticed up and down Eng-

156 THE RHYME OF

land some men with nasty little undergrowths
upon their upper lips alone, and others with
great wild beards like Grizzlebeard here, and
others with moth-eaten beards as it were — the
worst of all; depend upon it they shaved,
each of them, at some time or another of a
Sunday.

" It is a day of rest, and there is no labour
like shaving. It is a day of dignity, and there
is no grimacing, sour-faced, donnish occupa-
tion like that of shaving. So I say : ' There is
a day for everything, and everything has its
lucky time except burial.' "

Myself. " There now ! And that was the
very thing I was going to say had its most
varying days! For does not the old rhyme go:

' Buried on Monday, buried for health,
Buried on Tuesday, buried for wealth ;
Buried on Wednesday, buried at leisure,
Buried on Thursday, buried for pleasure ;
Buried on Friday, buried for fun,
Buried on Saturday, buried at one.' "

The Sailor. "Why?"

Myself. "There you show yourself what
you are, a man that follows the sea. For on

LUCKY BURIAL-DAYS 157

land here we knock off work at twelve on
Saturday — that is parsons, gravediggers,
coffin-carriers, mourners, and the rest, who
very wiUingly dispose of the dead between
seven and five of a week day, but do claim
their half-holiday. But you sailors may claim
your half till you are black in the face, another
disposes of your time I And even if a law
were passed that you should loll about from
eight bells on Saturday noon to the dog
watch of Monday, as we do on land, that
other would tickle you up with a snorter
before you had lit your pipes. Tumble up
there the lot ! Watch ? I'll watch you,
watch or no watch ! Tumble up there and
take it lively! Run up and clew them in
till your hands freeze I Pull, you lubbers,
pull ! Squirm over the yard like a row of
tumblers at a fair, and make fast and be
damned to you ! Better for you than for me.
" Then the song goes on (for us jolly people
on land ; as for you at sea, you may die and
drown as you will) :

' Buried on Sunday after eleven,
You get the priest and you go to heaven.* "

158 ON ABSOLUTION

Grizzlebeard. " This is rank folly, for abso-
lution is for living men."

Myself. " There you go, Grizzlebeard, verba-
lising and confumbling, and chopping logic
like the Fiend I exegetic and neo-scholastic,
hypograstic, defibulating stuff! An end to
true religion ! Soft, old man, soft ; the bless-
ing over a coffin does no man any harm, and
is a great solace to uneasy spirits. You are
for ever running into the very gate of heresy
with your determinations. It is a bad and a
feverish state you have fallen into. Make
amends while you yet have time I Or perhaps
when you come to die you shall have no
candles round your coffin and no large black
cloth over it spangled with silver tears, and no
bishop to sprinkle it; nay, who knows, not
even a monk nor a parish priest, nor so much
as a humble little curate from the castle.

" When death is on you, Grizzlebeard, I
would have you write out in large black
letters on a big white board, ' This man
BELIEVED,' and hang it round your neck
and so die. In this way there will be no
error.

THE WORRIED GHOST 159

** For errors are made in this matter I assure
you, and one man, though secretly devout (he
came from near my own farm), was by such an
error buried anyhow and in common fashion
with prayers only, so that he had to haunt
Normans (as they called the house) on the
Dial Post Road. And a job it was, I can
tell you ! For the people in that house
feared ghosts, and when he walked, though
he walked never so gently, they would give
great blood-curdling shrieks, such as threw
him into a trembling and a sweat — poor
spirit I — until the ghost-masters who set the
uncomforted dead such tasks had mercy on
him, and let him go haunt the Marine
Parade at Worthing, where no man minded
him."

The Poet. "Then how was he rested at
last?"

Myself. " Why, in the usual fashion ; by
the drawing of a pentagon upon the sand and
the sacrificing in its middle of a pure white
hen. I have done."

The Sailor. " It is as well, for it has stopped
raining."

160 THE VERY OLD ROAD

And so it had. To our comfort and the
changing of our minds.

• .••••

So all along the road under Chanctonbury,
that high hill, we went as the morning
broadened : along a way that is much older
than anything in the world : a way that leads
from old Pevensey Port through the Vale of
Glynde and across Cuckmere and across Ouse,
and then up to the height of Lewes, and then
round the edge of the Combe, and then down
on to the ledge below the Downs, making
Court House and Plumpton Corner, West
Meston, Clinton, and Hollow Pie Combe
(though between these two it branches and
meets again, making an island of Wolstonbury
Hill), and then on by Poynings and Fulking
and Edburton, and so to the crossing of the
water and the Fort of Bramber, and so along
and along all under the Downs until it passes
Arun at Houghton Bridge, and so by Bury
and Westburton, and Sutton and Duncton,
GrafFham and Cocking, and Diddling and
Harting — all Sussex names and all places
where the pure water having dripped through

THE WASHINGTON INN 161

the chalk of the high hills, gushes out in
fountains to feed that line of steadings and
of human homes. By that way we went, by
walls and trees that seemed as old as the old
road itself, talking of all those things men
talk of, because men were made for speech
and for companionship, until we came to the
cross-roads at Washington ; and there, said
I to my companions:

Myself. " Have you heard of Washington
Inn?"

Grizzlebeard. " Why, yes, all the world has
heard of it ; and when Washington the Vir-
ginian, a general overseas, was worriting his
army together a long time ago, men hearing
his name would say : ' Washington ? . . .
Washington ? . . . I know that name.' Then
would they remember the inn at Washing-
ton, and smile. For fame is of this character.
It goes by the sound of names."

The Poet. " For what, then, is the inn of
Washington famous ? "

The Sailor. '* Not for a song, but for the
breeder of songs. You shall soon learn."

And when he had said that we all went in

162 "THE SWIPES THEY TAKE IN

together, and, in the inn of Washington, we
put it to the test whether what so many men
had sung of that ale were true or no. But
hardly had the Sailor put his tankard down,
when he cried out in a loud voice :
" It is true, and I believe I "
Then he went on further : '* Without any
doubt whatsoever this nectar was brewed in
the waxing of the moon and of that barley
which Brutus brought hither in the first
founding of this land 1 And the water
wherein that barley-corn was brewed was
May-day dew, the dew upon the grass before
sunrise of a May-day morning. For it has all
the seven qualities of ale, which are : —

K Aleph = Clarity,

3 Beth = Savour,

3 Gimel = A lively hue,

*i Daleth = Lightness,

n He = Profundity,

) Vau = Strength retained,
and lastly, t Zayin, which is Perfection and The
End.

" It was seeking this ale, I think, that
Alexander fought his way to Indus, but

AT THE WASHINGTON INN 163

perished miserably of the colic in the flower
of his age because he did not find it.

*' Seeking this ale, I think it was, that moved
Charlemagne to ride both North and South,
and East and West, all his life long in those
so many wars of his whereof you may read in
old books; for he lived to be two hundred
years and more, and his bramble beard became
as white as sea-foam and as tangled, and his
eyes hollow with age. And yet he would not
abandon the quest for Mitchell's Ale which
they sell at Washington : but he could not
find it, and so died at last of chagrin.

" And hearing of this ale from a FamiUar,
Aldabaran sought Saragossa in disguise, and
filled ten years full, planning and devising
how to get it from the Emir of El Kazar,
who was in league with the Evil One ; then,
in the very moment of his triumph, and as
he was unlocking that cellar door, a guardian
slave slew him with a sword, and his soul
went forth, leaving the cask untasted.

" So also St. OfFa, of Swinestead in Mercia,
fainting at the thought of this ale which
tempting demons had let him smell in a

164 IS THE VERY BEST

dream, was near to missing his salvation. He
left his cell and went out beyond Kent, over
the narrow seas into the Low Countries, and
wandered up and down for seven years, until
at last he went distracted and raving for lack
of the liquor. But at last he was absolved at
Rome.

" Then you have that Orlando, whose fury
was aroused by nothing else but a passionate
need for this same brew. For he had led a
peaceful life as a cobbler in Upper Beeding
until he heard by chance of this ale, and
immediately he set out to seek it, and in so
doing was led to all his heroic deeds and also
to wounds and dissolution at last, and died
without ever putting his lips to the tankard.

*' Shall I make mention of Gastos or of
Clemens ? Of Artaxerxes, of Paulus or Ramon,
who all expected and desired this thing in
vain ? Or recall Praxiteles or Zeno his cousin,
Periscopolos the Pirate, Basil of Cyrene, or
Milo ? They also wasted themselves upon
that same endeavour. But to me who am
nobler than them all, it has been granted to
drink it, and now I know that it resolves

BEER I KNOW" 165

all doubts, and I shall go to my great death
smiling. It is the satisfaction of all yearnings,
and the true end of all philosophies. Of
the Epicurean, for it is a final happiness. Of
the Stoic, for it leaves me indifferent to every
earthly thing. Of the Hegelian, for it is It.
And I see in the depths of it, the conclusion
of desire and of regret, and of recollection and
of expectation, and of wonder. This is that
of which the great poets sang when they said
that time itself should be dissolved, of which
the chief of them has written :

* Till one eternal moment stops his powers :
Time being past then all time past is ours.'

It is indeed good beer; and when we leave
our valleys we will all drink it together in
Paradise."

Grizzlebeard. " You are right."
The Poet. " Yes, you are."
Myself. " We are all right together."
Grizzlebeard. " It is little wonder that for
such as this or worse, the Sons of the Acheans
fought ten long years round Troy, or that,
nourished by this royal thing, the men of

(1,665) M

166 CADWALLA THE KING

Sussex in old time defeated all their foes,
and established themselves firmly upon this
ancient land."

Myself, " Yes, indeed ! Cadwalla, who was
the fiirst King of Sussex to learn the true
Faith, and who endeared himself for ever to
St. Wilfrid and to the Pope, by giving to
the one ten thousand, but to the second
twenty thousand barrels of this most admir-
able and impossible -to -be -too -much -praised
Cervisian nectar (you may find his tomb in
Rome), was moved to extend our power
right over sea, even to the Isle of Wight.
When he had subdued that land, he took the
twb princes that were the heirs to its throne,
and put them to death. And he conquered
all Sussex and all Kent and was mighty
before his thirtieth year — all on the ale of
Washington, Mitchell's Ale of the Washington
Inn ! Of such potency it was I "

I looked through the window as I so con-
cluded, and there again had come the storms
of rain.

*' We will not start," I said. *' It is rain-
ing."

THE VICTORIES 167

The Poet. " But just now . . ."

Myself. " Oh, Poet I will you also be teasing
us with logic, or have you not learnt in your
little life how one man may drive off for a
game a whole drove of horses, while another
may not so much as glance over a little
new set maple hedge no higher than his
knee ? So it is ! Let us hear no more of
justice and the rest, but sit here snug in
the middle of the world, and make Grizzle-
beard do the talking. He has lived longest
and knows most, yet has he given us neither
a story nor a song."

" You have told us," said Grizzlebeard
wilUngly enough, "the story of Cadwalla,
who had that fine imperial instinct in him
which made him chafe even within the wide
limits of his Sussex kingdom, and sail over
the sea with that great expedition of his to
conquer and annex the Isle of Wight, the two
princes, heirs to which, he also very imperially
murdered. Your story made me think of all
those other times in history when the armies
and the banners of this immortal county have
shown themselves in distant lands."

168 OF SUSSEX

The Sailor. "It is interesting that you
should know so much, dear Grizzlebeard, but
those are far-off things, and we have no true
record of them."

Myself. "Yet, Grizzlebeard, since you are
upon this topic, I very often have much
desired to know how it is that this county
of ours seems everywhere to exceed its natural
boundaries, and to have planted a foot north,
east, and west in the territory of others;
guarding itself, as it were, by bastions and
belts of territory not its own, and preserving
them as symbols and guarantees of its great
military power."

The Poet. " Nay, doubtless, the county of
Sussex would have expanded southward were
it not that it was there contained by the sea,
which will brook no man's foot."

The Sailor. "Say rather that there was no
annexation southward, because the salt sea,
being unharvested, there was nothing worth
annexing; but, even as it is, the fishermen
of Sussex will not have foreigners prying
about in their preserves, and from the Owers
Bank right away to Dungeness, if you will

AND HER EMPIRE 169

hail a fishing-boat at night he will answer
you in the Sussex way. Nor are men of
strange seaboards tolerated in that sea."

Myself. " I still desire to ask you, Grizzle-
beard, since you are the oldest of us, and
have in your house so many papers and
records, not to speak of in your mind so
many ancient traditions of this inviolate land,
how is it that Sussex has sovereignty over
and beyond the marsh of the Rother, and
over and beyond the ridge of hills wherein
take their rise the Adur, the Arun, and
the Ouse ? For I have often looked at that
flat piece without any boundary of its own
beyond Crawley, in which all the men seem
to be Surrey men, and which I yet notice
to be marked Sussex upon the map. How
comes it that we are the masters not only
of our own rivers, but also of the head
waters of the Snouzling Mole, the Royal
Medway, and other lesser streams ? "

" It so happens," answered Grizzlebeard,
with immense satisfaction, " that I can answer
that question. For this great thing was
done at about the time when the tyrant

170 THE GREAT WAR BETWEEN

Napoleon was pursuing his petty ambitions
among the beggarly nations of the Continent,
and it had its origin and spring in that most
beloved part of this beloved county whence
I also take my being, and where I also was
born — I mean the parts round about Hail-
sham, where the flats invite the sea. There
has the fate of our county been twice decided.
And since also the full story of the Great
Fight has been preserved in the diaries and
records of my own family, I am well fitted
to tell it to you. For the next few hours
I will retail it. Though the rain passes over
and the sun comes out, still shall I go on, for
it is a favourite of mine. I will go on and
on, and relate unendingly the same while you
yawn and stretch ; nay, though you implore
me to cease or attempt to coerce me, yet
shall I continue the story until I have com-
pleted it.

" You must know, then, that the king who
was over Sussex at that time being then in
the fortieth year of his age and the twenty-
second of his reign, a man not only august
but universally loved, and one very tender

SUSSEX AND KENT 171

to the consumers of malt liquor, but a strict
governor of brewers (God rest his soul I), a
song arose in those parts concerning the
tyrant Napoleon and his empty boasting, that
when he had conquered Prussia, Russia,
Bornesia, Holland, all Italy and Spain, he
would challenge the power of Sussex itself
before he had done with warfare; and this
song, let me tell you, ran as follows."

With this Grizzlebeard, clearing his aged
throat, tunefully carolled out the following
manly verse in the tune to which all Sussex
songs have been set, without exception, since
the beginning of time — the tune which is
called "Golier."

" If Bonaparte
Shud zumraon d'Eart
To land on Pevensey Level,
I have two sons
With our three guns
To blarst un to the de-e-vil."

** It is," continued Grizzlebeard, when the

172 THE GREAT WAR BETWEEN

long-drawn notes of the challenge had died
away, " a very noble and inspiring song,
compared with which * To the North, Merry
Boys,' is but music-hall blare, and the ' Mar-
seillaise ' a shrieking on a penny whistle.

*'Now this song," he continued, "being of
its right virtue and glory a hymn that could
not but spread far among men, travelled all
over our county, being known and com-
mented on in Lewes in the king's own castle,
and eastward all along the beach to Hastings,
and beyond that to the banks of Brede and
over Brede to Rother, which was in those
days the boundary of this land ; for we had
not then begun to give laws to East Guild-
ford, on the left bank of the river mouth.

" As luck would have it, it travelled, per-
haps in the speech of pedlars, or printed as
a broadside and sold from their packs, all
up the valley of Rother and up among the
Kentish men, and was soon known in Apple-
dore. Small Hythe, and so on, right up to
Goudhurst itself, which stands upon a hill.
And here it was that ill-fortune lay in wait
for the Kentish men, who had always been

SUSSEX AND KENT 173

a proud lot and headstrong, though relying
upon St. Thomas of Canterbury and other
worthies, and furiously denying that they
had tails. For they had no more humour
about them than you will find in a cathedral
verger, and so much for Kent.

" Well, then, by the time this great song
had come up on to Goudhurst, where it stands
upon its hill, the Kentish men in their pride
and folly, or perhaps only in their ignorance
(for I would not do them wrong), turned it to
suit their own purpose and vanity and had
begun to sing it thus:

' If Bonaparte
Shud zummon d'Eart
To land on Pevensey Level,
There are three men
In Horsemonden
Will blarst un to the de-e-vil.'

"Which corruption and degradation of so
great a strain they very frequently repeated
over their cups at evening in the security of
their inland homes.

** Now, when news of this came into Sussex
and reached the king, where he sat in his
castle of Lewes, considering his own great-

174 THE GREAT WAR BETWEEN

ness and the immensity of the world, he
could scarcely believe his ears. For that
the Kentish men should sing songs of their
own and even put on airs when it so suited
them, nay, timorously raid over Rother to
pinch a pig when the good-man was from
home, he thought tolerable enough ; but
that they should take the song which was,
as it were, the very heart of Sussex, and
turn it to their own uses, was, he thought,
quite past bearing, and, indeed, as I have
said, he could hardly credit it.

" So he very courteously sent a herald
mounted upon a Uttle brown donkey and
beautifully apparelled, who came to the
King of Kent, where he sat or rather
sprawled at meat in Canterbury. And this
herald, blowing his trumpet loudly in the
King of Kent's ear, delivered him the letter
of the King of Sussex, and spurring round
his steed, very gallantly capered away.

"The King of Kent, as you may well
believe, was quite unable to read, but there
is no lack of clerks in Canterbury, so he
had one brought, who trembling broke open

SUSSEX AND KENT 175

the seal whereon were stamped the arms of
Sussex, and read to his master as follows :

" * Brother Kent : We hear, though we
will not believe it, that certain of your
subjects (without your knowing it, we will
swear) have taken to their own use our
private anthem, and are singing it wantonly
enough in Goudhurst and sundry other of
your worthy hamlets; and that, not content
with this usurpation of our sovereign right
and of the just possessions of our dear
people (we are even told, though our soul
refuses to entertain it), they have so murdered,
changed, and debased this Royal Hymn as
to use it in praise of their own selves, and
in particular of a steading and sties called
Horsemonden, of which neither we nor we
think any other man has ever heard.

" * We do you, therefore, to wit, by these
presents, brother Kent, that you do instantly
command and proclaim by heralds through-
out your dominions that under pain of
horrible torture and death this practice shall
immediately cease, if, indeed, we are rightly
informed that it has arisen.

176 THE GREAT WAR BETWEEN

" ' Greetings and fraternal benedictions. —
Given by us in our castle of Lewes on the
first day of the October brewing, in the year
3010 since Brutus landed from Troy and
laid the foundations of our house. — (Signed)
Sussex.'

"The King of Kent when this message
was read to him ordered the unhappy priest
to immediate execution (as is the custom in
that county when they deal with clerics),
but no sooner had he done so than he re-
gretted the act, for not knowing how to write
he must needs dictate another letter. So he
sent for another priest, who was a long time
coming, but when he came bade him write
as follows :

" * Brother Sussex, a word in your ear :
We may not be book-larned, but we will
stand no nonsense, and so sure as hops are
hops we will, with some small fragment of
our forces, but sufficient to the purpose, come
up into your land and harry it, and burn
down the steadings and the ricks and carry
away all the pigs and cattle; and we will
storm your castle, and we will put a new

SUSSEX AND KENT 177

Bishop in Chichester in the place of your
Bishop, and we will put our reeves into
Midhurst, Horsham, Arundel, and other
places, and as for your Koyal seat there
we will put our own nephew upon it. But
as for you we will keep you in chains. —
Kent.*

" This letter he despatched to the King of
Sussex, who when he received it conceived it
impossible to avoid war.

"Yet he hoped in his honourable and
gentle heart that this last extremity should
be avoided, and he sent yet another letter,
putting it in words even more fair and
mannerly than the first, saying that he de-
sired no more than peace with his due
rights and honour ; and this letter he sent
by a herald as he had sent the first. But
this second herald the King of Kent put
to death, so that now there was no choice
but to take arms. So the King of Sussex
summoned his army to meet him within
fourteen days in the courtyard of the best
inn of Lewes, which was in those days
called the Turk's Head, but has since been

178 THE BATTLE OF BATTLE

destroyed by those wicked men who hate
inns and all other good and lovable things.
Marshalling his army there, and seeing to
their accoutrements and putting them in
good heart, he took the road for Brede,
and posted himself upon the height of that
hill which has ever since been called Battle,
facing towards the rising sun.

"The day was the 14th of October, the
hearts of all were merry and high, and
every man was prepared to do most dread-
ful things. But how the fight was joined,
and how it went, and of the wonderful
deeds done in it and of its imperishable
effects I must next tell you."

The Poet. "I should hke to hear the
Kentish version of this tale."

"You must know, then, that the King of
Sussex, being thus posted a little before sun-
rise upon the hill now called Battle, and look-
ing eastward over Brede, he first harangued
all his men in proper fashion, and drew them
up with skill into a line, urging them what-
ever they did not to break their rank until
they should have defeated the enemy, which,

THE BATTLE OF BATTLE 179

when they had accomplished it, they were
free to pursue. And having so spoken he
observed coming across the valley the forces
of his enemy, the King of Kent, armed with
long hop-poles, and carrying themselves in very
fierce demeanour. Nay, as they marched they
most insolently sang the song which was the
cause of all this quarrel ; and the Horsemonden
contingent in particular, which was in the van,
or place of honour, gave forth with peculiar
violence the new lines they had composed to
their own glory.

"Though this sight, as you may imagine,
was malt vinegar and pickles to the men of
Sussex, they stirred not a foot, and they said
not a word, but in a grim and determined
manner did they turn up the sleeves of their
right arms, spit into their palms, and very
manfully clench their ash-plants, wherewith
they did thoroughly determine to belabour
and bang the invaders of their happy homes.
And there should be mentioned, in particular,
the men of Hailsham, my dear native place,
who on that day carried ash-plants so heavy
and huge that ten men of our time could

180 THE BATTLE OF BATTLE

hardly carry one, though they should stagger
under it as builders do under a scaffolding
pole.

" Now the men of Kent began to climb the
hill, the men of Sussex watching them silently

Keutr cuici

;* bifMc^kiKb

from above, and being most careful in their
order to preserve all due regard, and not to
walk upon the ornamental beds, or to disturb
the shrubberies of the kind gentleman who
had permitted them to draw up their line in
the grounds of Battle Abbey. For in those
gardens, note you, is the position which all
the great generals of his staff had pointed out

THE BATTLE OF BATTLE 181

to the King of Sussex, saying that it was
* a key,' and though he could make no sort of
guess what that might mean, there had he
drawn up his array.

" When the men of Kent felt the steepness
of the hill, their song died away ; they began
to pufF and to blow ; and their line, which they
had ordered like so many cattle drovers, was
all to pieces, so that while the first of their
men, and the leanest, were already approach-
ing the men of Sussex, the last were still tying
up their shoe-laces at the bridge, or arguing
with the little old man in green corduroy
who kept the level-crossing over the railway.
For he was assuring them that a train was
signalled, and that their advance was most
dangerous ; but they were protesting that if
he would but let them through the wicket
gate, which stands by the side of the great
railway gates, they could pop across before it
came.

" This disarray and grievous lack of general-
ship in the ranks of Kent was the ruin of that
force, seeing that it is laid down in all books
of military art that if a line be broken it has

(1,656) ^

182 THE BATTLE OF BATTLE

lost its strength. But, as you may guess, the
art was all on our side, the folly and misfor-
tune upon that of our enemies, whom the God
of Battles had already devoted to a complete
discomfiture.

" For when the first arrivals of them came
to the crest of the hiU, all puffed and blown
with their climbing, some were banged in the
face, others swiped upon the sides, others
heavily pushed in the chest, and others more
painfuUy caught upon the point of the chin.
Others again were blinded by stout blows in
the eye, or turned silly by clever cuts upon
the corner of the jaw, whangs upon the noddle,
and other tactical feats too numerous to men-
tion. For our king, and yet more his staff, and
generals and quartermasters too, were great
masters of the art of war. In this skilful
manner, then, were the foremost men of Kent
sophist ically handled, until at last the whole
score of them (for the vanguard were at least
of that number) broke and ran for cover, and
by that action threw into a confusion and
stampede the other hundred or so who were
still straggling up the hill. Nor was there any

THE BATTLE OF BATTLE 183

heart left in the men of Kent save in the
mouths of a few (and their king was one of
them), who, having taken refuge in an upper
room of the inn that stands by Brede, shouted
out mingled encouragement and menace, and
bade the fighters in the road below play the
man. But these men, considering rather the
banging they were getting than the words of
their commanders up there in safety, altogether
and at one moment fled, bunched into one
lump, very frightened and speedy, and spread-
ing rumours that their pursuers were not men
but devils. And as they ran they threw
their hop-poles down to give them greater
speed, and some cast off their coats, and
many more lost their hats as they ran, and in
general they fell into a rout and confusion.

" As you may imagine, the men of Sussex
had by this time the word of command to fall
upon them and spare them not at all. Which
order they obeyed, belabouring the men of
Kent vilely with their ash-plants, and herding
and harrying and shepherding them together
into the narrow pass of the level-crossing,
where they all pushed and screamed, and,

184 THE ROUT OF

especially those on the outermost part who
were the recipients of the ash-plant blessing,
showed an immoderate eagerness to be off.

" At last the train of which I spoke having
passed, and the little man in green corduroy
who kept the level-crossing having consented
to open the gates, they all poured through in
a great stream, tearing for their lives with one
half of the men of Sussex after them, pursuing
and scattering the foe in every direction, while
the other half remained behind in Brede, for a
purpose I will presently tell you.

" The men of Kent then being broken and
dispersed all over that countryside, some took
refuge in Egham Wood, and others fled to
Inkpin, and the more stalwart but not the
more brave worked round as best they could
to Robertsbridge, while a dozen or more ran
to earth in Staplecross. So all that country-
side was strewn with hiding and crouching
men, some of whom got away and some of
whom were taken prisoners, but none of whom
re-formed nor showed themselves able to rally.

" Meanwhile their king and his staff, being
surrounded in that inn, surrendered upon

THE MEN OF KENT 185

terms which the King of Sussex in his high
and generous heart would not make too
hard.

" The first article, then, of this treaty was
that for every prisoner released the Treasury
of Kent should pay the sum of one shilling,

^^.^..1.4.T..^.

.HUM \\m/ mihiLLs:

unless he were a Kentish gentleman, and for
him the ransom was half-a-crown. And until
the money should be paid the prisoners should
be held.

" Then the second article was that the men
of Kent should pay to the King of Sussex
100 pockets of hops a year by way of tribute,
which custom was continued even to our own
time, nor did it cease until hops became

186 THE CAPITULATIONS AND

so cheap that no one would be at the pains
of carrying them to Lewes from the Sussex
border.

" But the third article, which more concerns
us, was that the right bank of Rother from
over against Wittersham, so over the canal
and then down the wall of Wallingmarsh,
and so right to the sea coast, should pass
from the Crown of Kent to the Crown of
Sussex, and be held by the King of Sussex
and his heirs for ever. And so it stands to this
day. And to this new frontier land the King
of Sussex gave the name of Guildford Level,
because it was indeed level, and in honour
of the town of Guildford in Surrey, which
was his mother's dower. And he built there
East Guildford, and founded it and endowed
it. But it never throve ; so that when men
talk of Guildford they commonly mean Guild-
ford in Surrey as being the larger of the two
towns. And the King of Sussex built a
hghthouse in this new province for mariners,
and having now both sides of Rye harbour,
he deepened it and dredged it so that it
became the royal place you know, and far

ANNEXATIONS FOLLOWING 187

out at sea, where the Fairway begins, he set
an old broom fast in the sand by the broom-
stick, with the besom end of it above the
waters, so that no man might miss the
Fairway, and there it still stands, a blessing
to mariners.

"When the King of Sussex had done all
these things he went back home to his castle
of Lewes, but not before he had most royally
dined and entertained his army in the inn at
Battle, and caused to be broached for them
1732 barrels of that exceedingly old ale,
called Audit Ale, the memory of which is
preserved in those parts most wonderfully.

" This is the story of how the men of Kent
were conquered by the men of Sussex and
Guildford Level and the marsh were annexed
and made a bastion, as it were, of our
kingdom. And on account of this great fight
it is that Battle is called Battle, and not at
all on account of that other skirmish with the
Normans, in which we so thoroughly de-
feated them also, that they turned their backs
to the Weald, and ran off as best they could
to Dover and the mean places of the East.

188 SURREY ALSO TREATS

For we would never have William for our
king, and we never did. But he is Duke
William for us, and Duke William only now
and for ever. Amen 1 "

The Poet. "It is possible the men of Kent
would tell a different story I "

Myself. " But that does not tell us the way
in which we got hold in this county of all the
parts about Crawley, and the belt of land
which is very manifestly that of Surrey men."

Grizzlebeard. " Why, that was what they
call strategical. When the barons of Surrey,
the chief of whom lived in a hole under
Reigate Hill, heard of the Battle and knew
of what stuff the King of Sussex was and
all his men, they came of their ovsm accord
and asked him to hold that belt of land
in which their rivers rise, so as to have the
better protection. To this he very willingly
agreed, and in this fashion was the northern
boundary of Sussex drawn."

Myself. " And it has stopped raining."

The Sailor. " And may it never rain again,
for while it rains we sit here in inns and
hear nothing but interminable stories."

THE STORRINGTON INN 189

When he had said that, we all got up and
took the road again, desiring to be in Stor-
rington for lunch, for the weather had a good
deal delayed us.

So we went on along that same old road,
always westward, until we came to Storring-
ton, and there we went into the inn called
"The White Horse," and when we got in
there fatigue came upon us and a sort of
gloom, and a quarrelling temper, such as
men will get up between them when they have
been penned together for too long, even if
they have been out upon a broad high road,
and have played the part of companions.

As we sat thus together, the Sailor, the
Poet, Grizzlebeard and I, gloomily consider-
ing the workedness-out of all things, and the
staleness of experience, there came in quite
suddenly a very tall young gentleman, less than
thirty years of age, lean, and having a thin-
nish light moustache, more turned up on one
side than on the other. His eyes were kindly
and wild, and from beneath his hat, which
was tilted on the back of his head, appeared
over his high forehead wisps of grey-brown

190 THE HUNTING MAN

hair. He had on white leather breeches ; he
was booted and spurred ; his tail coat was
grey, with metal buttons upon it, and round
his throat instead of a collar was a soft piece
of cloth, which had once been carefully
arranged, but which was now draggled. It
was fastened by a safety-pin made of gold. A
little mud was splashed on his hat, a little less
upon his face, much more upon his boots and
breeches.

This Being held himself back as he walked
into the room, shut the door behind him with
a great deal of noise, and said " Evening I "
genially. Then he sat down on one of the
Windsor chairs, sighing deeply.

He jumped up again, rang the bell, didn't
wait for it to be answered, put his head
through the door, and said, " Some of the
same I " shut the door, sat down again, and
laughed.

We were pleased to see him with us, and
we suggested that even so early he had been
hunting the fox, which was indeed the case.
I asked him (though I knew nothing of
these things) whether he had a good run, to

AND HIS HORSE 191

which he answered, shaking his head rapidly
and biting one of his moustachios :

" No ! No 1 C'r'inly not 1 . . . Nearly lost
me life I "

"I am sorry to hear that," said Grizzle-
beard, who had often hunted the fox, but
now did so no longer. The Poet, the Sailor,
and I sat silent to hear what the newcomer
might have to say. He heaved a deep and
contented breath as of a man in port from
stormy seas, leant forward with his lean
body, swung his brown gloved hands slowly
between his white leather legs and said :

"Wasn't my horse. . . . Haven't got a
horse. . . . Never had one. ..."

Then turning to Grizzlebeard, whom he
rightly imagined to be the wealthiest of our
group, he said, " Like riding ? "

"Yes," said Grizzlebeard, thinking care-
fully, " I have always liked to ride horses. I
like it still in moderation."

" Ah ! " said the stranger wisely, with his
head on one side. " That's it. Now the way
you ride 'em doesn't really matter much ; it's
the kind of horse 1 "

192 THE RED HORSE

" Played cup and ball with you ? " said I,
kindly.

"Contrariwise, he went quite smooth and
easy ; but oh my Lord, his courage ! . . .

" You know," he went on, tapping his left
palm with his right forefinger, "there's a kind
of courage that's useful and another kind
that's foolhardy. Now this horse (which was
old Benjamin's of Petworth) didn't mind
danger and he didn't know danger; so there
was no merit as you may say ; but I'm not
denying a good thing when I see it, and I
tell you he was a hero I "

He sat down again and thought consider-
ably about the horse. There was a sort of
lyricism or inspiration in him. He looked
up at the ceiling and said, " Lord ! What a
brute ! " Then he spread his hands outwards,
staring at us with his eyes, and said, "He
was red all over, and his eyes were red as
well, and he chucked his head up in the air
like a big lizard, and he tried to bite his bit
in two with his great teeth, and he snarled
and spat defiance, and he could never stand on
more than two feet at a time, and he changed

THE RED HORSE 198

them ten times a second. It was what they
call * dancing/ That's how he went on while
all the other people were sitting quietly on
their beastly great well-fed animals, looking
silly. I didn't say anything to him ; I didn't
feel it was my place ; but an ass of an iron-
monger man who's been buying land out
Graffham way said, ' Whoa then ! Whoa
there I ' . . . Silly gheezer I Made the beast
perfectly mad. . . . He did hate it I . . . and
I had no way of telling him it wasn't my
fault, though I longed to — from the bottom
of my heart. Then old Squire Powler, who
married my aunt Eliza for her money, and
butters up my father about his Dowser-man
and the wells, came up and asked me where
I had got the beast from, and I said, ' From
Hell,' and he went away looking like a fool."
When this excitable young man had said
all this, he was afraid (as men of breeding are
when they have got quite off the rails) that
he had said too much. But Grizzlebeard,
who had the kindest of hearts, said genially,
"Oh, there's no harm in old Mr. Powler."
And even I, though I did not know Squire

194 THE RED HORSE

Powler, said I believed that Dowsers were
quite genuine, which was the truth and did
no harm.

The tall lean man wanted to be silent after
his explosion, but Grizzlebeard drew him on,
and the young man's own straightforwardness
forbade him to be silent. He was bottling
up the tale and it must out, so he burst
forth again.

" Well, there I The first thing all the other
people did was to go after the little dogs
across a field or two. And this horse, which
was to carry me about, he stood stock still
and looked at them as though he thought
they were mad. Then he suddenly raced
away in a half circle with his head down, and
stopped short in front of an oak tree. This
annoyed me so much that I leant forward and
slapped him on the side of his face. And my
word ! Didn't he snap round and try to bite
my foot I And then he began hopping side-
ways in a manner most horrible to see and
to feel. Now by this time I was wondering
what would become of me, and I could fairly
have cried, for if he didn't go back into Pet-

THE RED HORSE 195

worth where somebody could catch him —
and that was what I hoped — the only other
thing would be to get off and give him a
kick in the ribs and let him run, and then I
should have to buy him, and I.,ord knows
who'd find the money for that I S'posin' he
went and drowned his silly self in Timberley
Brook or got hung up on a post ? Eh !
What?"

This tall, lean young man again thought
that he had exceeded, but our sympathetic
faces, nay, our appealing eyes, prompted him
to continue. He went on more slowly.

*' All of a sudden, a long way off, all the
little dogs began making those yelping noises
of theirs which they do when they get excited,
and as I was right high up on this tall animal
I could see their white tails wagging out by
Burton Rough, a little beyond the Jesuits.
I got really interested. . . . What ? Then
I stopped thinking of anything, because he,
this horse I mean, began going as quickly as
ever he could, quite straight, and I knew that
there was the Rother in between. Oh Lord 1
You talk of a mouth 1 , . ,

196 THE RED HORSE

" Now, when you want to pull up a horse
that's got too Frenchy, if you take me," he
continued, looking extremely intelligent, and
prepared to detail the whole process, " there' re
lots of dodges. Some men '11 give a sharp jerk
sideways, and try to wrench his head off, and
/ knew a man (he's dead now . . . kind o'
soldier) who just pulled and pulled and then
suddenly let go. He said that was the way.
But what / do is to saw backwards and for-
wards right and left 'til he's reg'lar bored
and can't stand it. Then he'll stop to see
what's the matter. Any horse will. Even if
he'd a mouth like an old conscience. 'Least
I thought any horse would 'til to-day; but
old Benjamin's horse didn't. Never thought
an animal could go so straight I Got quite
close to the turf and tucked his shins under
him somehow, Tirri Fat, Tirri Pat, Tirri Pat,
Tirri Pat, Tirri Pat, so quick, you couldn't
tell hardly when he touched and when he
didn't. I wasn't able to turn round and
look at his tail 'cause I was so anxious, but
it must have been standing straight out . . .
his neck was, anyway; and 1 knew the

THE RED HORSE 197

Rother was gettin' closer all the time. He
didn't take a lep exactly when he got to
the hedges, but he just went on gallopin'
and they went by from under him. Thought
I never saw the old roofs long way off
look so quiet ! When I came to Mr.
Churton's field, the one where the cows are,
I thought all of a sudden, * Sposin' there's
wire ? ' It's a measly sort of crinkled hedge,
but enough to hide wire. Well, long 'fore
I'd remembered, he was past it ; and that was
the only place you'd have known you were
passin' anything. He missed somethin' with
one of his hind feet, damn him, but he was off
again. Then I saw the Rother, and I thought
to myself quite clearly, * Either he'll jump
right over this river, and then it'll be a sort o'
miracle because it's eight times as far as any
horse has jumped before, and it's just as easy
to sit that as anything, because it will be just
sailing through the air ; or else he'll go into
the water, and then he won't play the fool
any more.' For I'd always heard that when a
wild, common, mad horse got into cold water
it cured him, same as 't would anybody else.

(1,655) * Q

198 THE RED HORSE

But there ! That's just what didn't happen I
Neither of 'em I You'll believe me . . . when
he got to the brink of that water — wow ! — he
swerved round like a swallow and made for
the high road and Petworth again 1 An' when
he got on the high road he began dancing
slowly home and puffing as though he'd done
a day's work, and every now and then he'd
sneeze. . . . My word, what a day ! "

" It can't have taken you a day ; it's only
lunch time yet," said Grizzlebeard gently.

" No,'' said the genial stranger, getting
up towards the door and looking over his
shoulder. " Not it ! Didn't take twenty
minutes ! " Then he roared through the
door : " 'Nother the same ! " shut the door
again, and went on : " Twenty minutes 't
most 1 Over b' 'leven 1 But it filled up the
day all right. Haven't been able to think
of anything else for hours. And he came
back to old Benjamin's as quiet as a lamb,
only with that hellish red glint in his eye.
And the stable fellow said :

*' ' You've been takin' it out of 'im ! '

" I was so angry I didn't know what to

THE RED HORSE 199

say ; anyhow, I said : ' Take your Beelzebub.'
And the stable boy said quite fiercely: ''E
ain't Beelzebub, and youVe no right to call
'im so out of his name ! ' So there might have
been a scrap, but I was too tired, and I said
I'd take something ladylike to ride home
with, and I've got it in the stable now, an'
I must be getting on. It's late, and I'm
very tired."

We told him one after the other, and then
all in chorus, that we were enchanted beyond
measure with the description of his day.
Grizzlebeard asked him whether he had
heard anything of the run, but he shook
his head, and the Poet, who had little
imagined that such things were possible in
English fields, watched them both with some
alarm.

Then we all went out with him to the
stables to see his beast. There was a half-
light in the stables, a gloom, and standing
in the stall an extraordinary sheepish-look-
ing thing, very old and fat, with a cunning
face, standing hardly fifteen hands, and plainly
determined to take easily the last of its pil-

200 THE QUIET ONE

grimage upon this earth. The tall, wild-eyed
gentleman went to it, patted it gently upon
its obese neck, and as he did so he sighed
with a deep sigh of satisfaction and of con-
tent. We led it out and saw him get on.
His legs looked inordinately long. He very
cheerily bade us " Good evenin'," and as he
rode out eastward down the road we heard
the slapping of his mount's shoes upon the
wet surface, as though in spite of her lethargy
(for she was a mare) the weight of the rider
was too much for her. It was a slow sort of
sidling gait that the noise betrayed as it
fainted into the distance. If he had suffered
from horses that morning, that afternoon he
was having his revenge ; it was the horse that
suffered.

As we stood there in the stable yard talk-
ing, a very short ostler of a hard appearance,
with the straw of ages in his teeth, came up,
and, believing us to be wealthy, hit his fore-
head hard with the forefinger of his right
hand. Grizzlebeard, who loved his country
like his soul and was always sincere, and never
allowed enough for the follies and vices of men.

WHO HE WAS 201

but believed them better or wiser than they
were, said to the ostler with great curiosity :
•' I ought to know that young man. He was
a nephew of Sir John Fowler's, I believe ? "
The ostler said as smartly as a serpent :
*' Yessir 1 I don't know about that, sir.
He's Master Battie, of The Kennels, sir,
where his father 'lows him to live, sir. He's
back from abroad, sir."

Grizzlebeard looked down the road gently,
thinking of the whole countryside and fixing
his man. Then he said a little sadly : " Oh I
that's Batteson ; that was the third one, the
one his poor mother used to think so much of,
and wouldn't send away."

We all went into the house together, and
when we got there Grizzlebeard, after deep
thought, said : " Now what an extraordinary
thing that a man brought up like that, as a
boy anyhow, should have allowed himself to
get on to a horse Hke that ! Who could ride
a horse like that ? "

The Sailor. " Why, no one, but let us be
up and going. We must not waste this day,
but soon we shall get over that lift of land

202 WE APPROACH ARUN

which lies between us and Arun. Let us take
the road."

So we went out and took the Amberley
road, and we passed the heath that is there,
leaving the pond upon our right, and we
passed the little wood of pine trees, and
Grizzlebeard said :

" How much taller is this wood ! I knew
it when I was a boy I "

And I said, *' Yes, and it is taller even for
me."

And the Poet said, *' I know it."
And the Sailor said, " I know it too."
Myself. " Yes, we all know this landmark,
and we all know these ups and downs, and

AND ITS BRIDGE 203

Rackham Mount, and the monastery behind
us, and Parham, that great house. For we
are on the fringe of the things we know and
in a border country as it were. Very soon
we shall speak with our own people under
our own hills."

Grizzlebeard. " In this hour, then, we shall
get over the height of land ; and the first of
us that sees the river Arun must tell the
others, and we will arrange for him some
sort of prize, since you all three speak in
such terms of the valley."

The Poet. " We do not speak of it so from
any common affection, no, nor from any affec-
tion which is merely deep, but because it is
our own country, and because the sight of
one's own country after many years is the
one blessed thing of this world. There is
nothing else blessed in this world, I think,
and there is nothing else that remains."

Myself. " What the Sailor says is true.
When we get over that lift of land upon
the Amberley road before us we shall see
Arun a long way off between his reeds, and
the tide tumbling in Arun down towards the

204 ON COMING HOME

sea. We shall see Houghton and Westburton
Hill, and Duncton further along, and all the
wall of them, GrafFham and Barlton, and so
to Harting, which is the end where the county
ceases and where you come to shapeless things.
All this is our own country, and it is to see it
at last that we have travelled so steadfastly
during these long days."

The Poet. " Whatever you read in all the
writings of men, and whatever you hear in
all the speech of men, and whatever you
notice in the eyes of men, of expression or
reminiscence or desire, you will see nothing
in any man's speech or writing or expression
to match that which marks his hunger for
home. Those who seem to lack it are rather
men satiated, who have never left their villages
for a time long enough to let them know the
craving and the necessity. Those who have
despaired of it are the exiles, and the curse
upon them is harder than any other curse that
can fall upon men. It is said that the first
murder done in this world was punished so,
by loss of home ; and it is said also that the
greatest and the worst of the murders men

ON COMING HOME 205

ever did has also been punished in the same
way, by the general exile of its doers and all
their children. They say that you can see
that exile in their gestures and in the
tortured lines of their faces and in the
unlaughing sadness of their eyes."

Grizzlebeard. " Tell me, Sailor, when you
say that thus, coming home, you will be
satisfied, are you so sure? For my part, I
have travelled very widely, especially in
Eastern places (which are the most different
from our own), and, one time and another
— altogether forty times — I have come back
to the flats of my own country, eastward of
the Vale of Glyiide. I have seen once more
the heavy clouds of home fresh before the
wind over the Level, and I have smelt, from
the saltings and the innings behind Pevensey,
the nearness of the sea. Then indeed I have
each time remembered my boyhood, and each
time I have been glad to come home. But
I never found it to be a final gladness.
After a little time I must be off again, and
find new places. And that is also why in
this short journey of ours I came along with

206 THAT ALL WANDER

you all, westward into those parts of the
county which are not my own."

The Sailor. " I cannot tell you, Grizzle-
beard, whether a man can find completion
in his home or no. You are a rich man,
and you have travelled as rich men do, for
pleasure — which rich men never find."

Chizzlebeard. " Nor poor men either I "

The Sailor. ** Well, poor men do not seek
it, so they are not saddened, but rich men,
anyhow, travel to find it and never find it ;
then if they return to find it in their homes,
why of course they will not find it there
either, for a man must come back home very
weary and after labour, or some journeying
to which he was compelled, if he is to taste
home."

Myself. "Nevertheless, Sailor, what Grizzle-
beard has asked, or rather what he means by
asking it, is true. We none of us shall rest,
not even in the Valley of Arun ; we shall go
past and onwards."

The Poet. " I think we shall."

Myself. " We shall go past and onwards ;
we shall not be content, we shall not be

HIS OWN COUNTRY 207

satisfied. The man who wrote that he had
not in all this world a native place knew
his business very well indeed, and it is the
business of all verse."

The Poet. "Nevertheless we know it in
dreams. There are dreams in which men
do attain to a complete satisfaction, reaching
the home within the home and the place in-
side the mind. And such a man it was, re-
membering such dreams, who wrote that he
had forgotten the name of his own country
and could not find his way to it. But this
man had in him a sense that soon the name
of his own country would be revealed to him,
and he knew that when he heard the name
he should find the place well enough; it would
come back at once to him, as the memory of
his love and of the Dovrefjeld came to that
man who had brought home the master-maid
in the story. He had brought her home
from over seas; but later he had forgotten
her, from eating human food.

" This man said he foresaw a fateful
moment coming, and that he had it like a
picture within. He would be in a tavern

208 HIS OWN COUNTRY

sitting by himself and two others would be
there talking low together, so that he should
not hear. Yet one of these talking low
would speak the name of his own country,
and when he heard the name of his own
country (he said) then he knew that he would
rise up, and take his staff and go.

* I will go without companions,
And with nothing in my hand * "

Myself. "That is a mistake. If he has
a staff in his hand he will have something
in his hand. I think he put it in for the
rhyme."

The Sailor. " Do not, do not interrupt the
Poet, or he will not be able to continue his
poetry; besides which, one is not bound to
these things in poetry as one is in arithmetic ;
it has been proved a thousand times by the
human race in chorus."

Grizzlebeard. '* Go on, Poet."

The Poet—

" I shall go without companions,
And with nothing in my hand ;
I shall pass through many places

That I cannot understand —
Until I come to my own country,
Which is a pleasant land !

HIS OWN COUNTRY 209

The trees that grow in my own country

Are the beech tree and the yew ;
Many stand together,

And some stand few.
In the month of May in my own country

All the woods are new."

The Sailor. " I believe I know where this
place is of which the Poet talks. It is the
corner of the hill above the Kennels, between
Upwaltham and Gumber."

The Poet {angrily). " It is nothing of the
sort. It is a place where no man ever has
been or will be — at least not such men as

Grizzleheard. "Do not be angry. Poet; but
tell us if there is any more. "

The Poet, " There is very httle more, and
it runs like this : —

' When I get to my own country

I shall lie down and sleep ;
I shall watch in the valleys

The long flocks of sheep.
And then I shall dream, for ever and all,

A good dream and deep.' "

Grizzleheard. " That is the point — that is
the point. If a man could be certain that

210 BUT I AM GLAD

he would sleep and dream for ever, then in
coming back to his own country he would
come to a complete content ! But you must
mark you how in all the stories of the thing,
even in the story of the homecoming of
Ulysses, they do not dare to tell you all
the human things that followed and all the
incompletion of its joys."

Myself. " For my part I think you are very
ungrateful or very mystical ; or perhaps you
have got religion. But at any rate it is
your business and not mine. I say for my
part, if I can get back to that country which
lies between Lavant and Bother and Arun, I
will live there as gratefully as though I were
the fruit of it, and die there as easily as a
fruit falls, and be buried in it and mix with it
for ever, and leave myself and all I had to it
for an inheritance."

Grizzleheard. " Well then, Myself, since
you think so much of your own country,
how shall we mark the passage of Arun
when we come to the bridge of it ? "

Myself. " Let us draw lots who shall drown
himself for a sacrifice to the river."

THE PROMISE 211

The Poet. "Let us count our money — it
must be getting low, and I have none."

The Sailor. " No, let us tell (so many years
after, no one cares) the story of the fost love
each of us had — such of us as can remember."

Each of us, lying in his heart, agreed.

When we had given this promise each to
the others (and each lying in his heart) the
rain began to fall again out of heaven, but
we had come to such a height of land that
the rain and the veils of it did but add to the
beauty of all we saw, and the sky and the
earth together were not Uke November, but
like April, and filled us with wonder. At
this place the flat water-meadows, the same
that are flooded and turned to a lake in mid-
winter, stretch out a sort of scene or stage,
whereupon can be planted the grandeur of
the Downs, and one looks athwart that flat
from a high place upon the shoulder of
Rackham Mount to the broken land, the
sand hills, and the pines, the ridge of Egdean
side, the uplifted heaths and commons which
flank the last of the hills all the way until
one comes to the Hampshire border, beyond

212 THE SIGHT OF ARUN

which there is nothing. This is the fore-
ground of the gap of Arundel, a district of the
Downs so made that when one sees it one
knows at once that here is a jewel for which
the whole county of Sussex was made, and
the ornament worthy of so rare a setting.
And beyond Arun, straight over the fiat
where the line against the sky is highest, the
hills I saw were the hills of home.

All we four stood upon that height in the
rain that did not hide the lights upon the
fields below and beyond us, and we saw white
and glinting in the water-meadows the river
Arun, w^hich we had come so many miles to
see; for that earlier happening of ours upon
his rising place and his springs in the forest,
did not break our pilgrimage. Our business
now was to see Arun in his strength, in that
place where he is already full of the salt sea
tide, and where he rolls so powerful a water
under the Bridge and by Houghton Pit and
all round by Stoke Woods and so to Arundel
and to the sea.

Then we looked at that river a little while,
and blessed it, and felt each of us within and

GRIZZLEBEAIU) TELLS 213

deeply the exaltation of return, the rain still
falling on us as we went. We came at last
past the great chalk pit to the railway, and
to the Bridge Inn which lies just on this side
of tlie crossing of Arun.

When we

had all four

come in out

of the rain into Mr. Duke's

parlour at the Bridge Inn, and

when we had ordered beer and

had begun to dry ourselves at

'^"j"" the fire, the Sailor said :

*' Come, Grizzlebeard, we

:> promised to tell the stories of our

^ first loves when we came to Arun ;

and as you are much the oldest of us do

you begin."

(1,655) p

214 THE STORY OF

" With all my heart," said Grizzlebeard,
"for, as you know, I am not one of those
belated heretics who hold such things sacred,
believing as I do that that only is sacred which
attaches directly to the Faith. . . . Neverthe-
less , , . to remember that great time, and
how securely 1 was held, and in what a port
lay the vessel of my soul, I do feel upon me
something that should silence a man. ..."

" By what moorings were you held ? "
said I.

" By three," he answered. " Her eyelids,
her voice, and her name." Then after a little
pause he went on :

" She was past her youth. Her twenty-
fifth year was upon her. Her father and her
mother were dead. She was of great wealth.

'* She had one brother, who lived away in
some great palace or other in the north, and
one sister who was married far off in Italy.
She herself had inherited an ancient house of
stone set in her own valley, which was that
of the river Brede, and most dear to her;
for it was there that she had lived as a child,
and there would she pass her womanhood.

HIS FIRST LOVE 215

" Into this house I was received, for she
was much older than I, and when I first
knew her I was not yet a man. Thither per-
petually in the intervals of study I returned.
Insensibly my visits grew most natural; I
passed the gates which are the beginning of
a full life, and constantly I found myself, in
spite of a more active bearing and a now
complete possession of my youth, alone in her
companionship. Her many servants knew me
as a part of their household : her grooms
who first had taught me to ride, her keepers
with whom I had first shot, her old nurse, a
pensioner, who favoured this early friend-
ship. The priest also called me by my
name.

"We walked together in long avenues ;
the lawns of four hundred years were a carpet
for us. We paced her woods slowly together
and often watched together in the frosty
season of the year the early setting of the
sun behind bare trees. At evening by her
vast and regal fires we sat side by side,
speaking in that light alone to each other
of dead poets and of the wars and of things

216 GRIZZLEBEARD'S STORY

seen and of small domestic memories grown
to be pictures clear and lovable.

"Then at last I knew what briar it was
that had taken root within me.

" In her absence — during the long nights
especially — there returned to me the drooping
of her eyes : their slow and generous glances.
Waking and far off from her, when I saw in
some stranger that same rare lowering of the
lids I was troubled.

" Her voice, because it was her very self,
so moved me, that whenever I heard it upon
my way to her doors, whenever I heard it
speaking even in the distance no matter what
things to another, I trembled.

" Her name, which was not Mary nor
Catherine, but was as common and simple a
name, was set above the world and was given
power over my spirit. So that to hear it
attached even to another or to see it written
or printed on a page everything within me
stirred, and it was as though a lamp had
been lit suddenly in my soul. Then, indeed,
I understood how truly there are special
words of witchcraft and how they bind and
loose material things."

OF HIS FIRST LOVE 217

An enthusiasm came into Grizzlebeard's
eyes, something at once briUiant and distant
like the light which shines from the Owers
miles out to sea. He opened his hand down
on the table with a fine gesture of vigour,
and cried out :

" But what a vision is that I What a
spring of Nature even for the poor memory
of a man ! I mean the unrestricted converse
with such a friend at the very launching of
life! When we are still without laws and
without cares, and yet already free from
guardians, and in the full ownership of our
own selves, to find a shrine which shall so
sanctify our outset : to know, to accompany,
and to adore !

"Do not ask me whether I contemplated
this or that, union or marriage, or the mere
continuance of what I knew, for I was up
in a world where no such things are con-
sidered. There was no time. No future
threatened me, no past could be remembered.
I was high above all these things.

" By an accident of fortune I was called
away, and in a distant town over seas had

218 GRIZZLEBEARD'S STORY

alien work put before me, and I mixed with
working men. I faithfully curry-combed lean
horses, and very carefully greased the axles
of heavy wheels, till, after nineteen months,
I could come home, and returning I made
at once for the Valley.

"As I approached the house I was con-
scious of no change. The interval had van-
ished, and I was once again to see and to
hear.

"The man that opened the door to me
knew me well. I asked for her by her title
and her name — for she was noble. He
answered me, using her title but not her
name. He told me that she would be home
that evening late, and he gave me a note to
read from her. The writing on that little
square of paper renewed in me with a power
I knew too well the magic of a sacred place
to which I had deliberately returned. As
I held it in my hand I breathed unsteadily,
and I walked in a fever towards the great
gates of iron; nor did I open the letter till
I had taken refuge for the next few hours
of evening in the inn of her village, where

OF HIS FIRST LOVE 219

also I was known and had been loved by
all in my boyhood.

*' There, underneath a little lamp, alone
and with food before me, I read the invita-
tion from her hand.

" I learnt in it that she had married a man
whose fame had long been familiar to me, a
politician, a patriot, and a most capable manu-
facturer. She told me (for I had warned her
of my landing) that they would be back at
seven to pass two nights in this country house
of theirs, and she begged me to be their guest,
at least for that short time.

*' A veil was torn right off the face of the
world and my own spirit, and I saw reality
all bare, original, evil and instinct with death.
Nor would I eat and drink, but at last I cried
out loud, mourning like a little child ; and
when I was rested of this I stood by the
window and gazed out into the darkness until
I had recovered my nature, and felt again that
I was breathing common air.

" When spirits fall it is not as when bodies
fall ; they are not killed or broken ; but I had
fallen in those moments from an immeasur-

220 GRIZZLEBEARD'S STORY

able height, and the rest of my way so long
as I might live was to be passed under the
burden to which we all are doomed. Then
strong, and at last (at such a price) mature,
1 noted the hour and went towards the doors
through which she had entered perhaps an
hour ago in the company of the man with
whose name she had mingled her own."
Myself. " What did he manufacture ? "
Grizzlebeard. *' Rectified lard ; and so well,
let me tell you, that no one could compete
with him." Then he resumed : " I entered
and was received. Her voice gave me again
for a moment some echoes of the Divine:
they faded; and meanwhile her face, her
person, with every moment took on before
me a less pleasing form.

" I have been assured by many who knew
us both that what I saw was far from novel.
To me it was as strange as earthquake. Her
skin, I could now see, though in the main
of a sallow sort, was mottled with patches ot
dead-white (for she disdained all artifice).
Her teeth were various ; I am no judge
whether they were false or true. Her eyes

OF HIS FIRST LOVE 221

suffered from some afFection which kept them
half closed ; her voice was set at a pitch which
was not musical ; her gestures were some-
times vulgar ; her conversation was inane. I
thought in the next quarter of an hour that
I had never heard so many things quoted
from the newspapers in so short a time.

" But we chatted together merrily enough
all three until she went to bed. Then I sat
up for some hours talking with the jolly
master of the house of politics and of lard.
For I had found in my travels and in my new
acquaintance with men that every man is most
willing and most able to speak of his own
trade. And let me tell you that this man
had everything in him which can make a
good citizen and a worthy and useful member
of the State. His intelligence was clear and
stable, his range of knowledge sufficient, his
temper equable, and his heart so warm that
one could not but desire him the best of fates.
I have not met him for many years, but I
saw in the last honours list that he had pur-
chased a title. I still count him for an older
friend.

222 GRIZZLEBEARD POURS OUT

"Next morning at a hearty breakfast I
grew to like him better than ever, and I could
see in the healthy light of a new day what
excellent qualities resided even in the wife
whom he had chosen. The work to which
my poverty (for then I was poor) compelled
me, called me by an early train to town, and
since that morning I have lived my life.

" But that first woman still sits upon her
throne. Not even in death, I think, shall I
lose her."

" Grizzlebeard, Grizzlebeard," said I, "these
things are from Satan ! Children and honest
marriage should long ago have broken the
spell."

" I am not married," said he, " neither have
I any children."

" Then loves here and there should have
restored you to yourself."

He shook his head and answered : " It was
not for lack of them, great or small. There
have been hundreds . . . but let us say no
more ! There was some foreigner who put it
well when he said, ' Things do not come at
all, or if they come, they come not at that

HIS BEER IN SACRIFICE 223

moment when they would have given us the
fullness of delight.' "

There remained in his pewter a little less
than half the beer it had held. He gazed at
it and noted also at his side, by the fire, a deal
box full of sand, such as we use in my county
for sanding of the floor.

Steadily, and with design, he poured out
all the beer upon the sand, and put down his
pewter with a ring.

The beer did not defile the sand. It was
soaked in cleanly, and an excellent aroma rose
from it over the room. But beer, as beer,
beer meant for men, good beer and nourish-
ing, beer fulfilling the Cervisian Functions,
beer drinkable, beer satisfying, beer meet-to-
be-consumed: that beer it could never be
again.

Then Grizzlebeard said : " You see what I
have done. I did it chiefly for a sacrifice,
since we should always forego some part of
every pleasure, offering it up to the Presiders
over all pleasure and pouring it out in a seem-
ing waste before the gods to show that we
honour them duly. But I did it also for a

224 THE SAILOR'S STORY

symbol of what befalls the chief experience
in the life of every man."

There was a long silence when Grizzle-
beard had done. From where I sat I could
look through the window and see the line
of the Downs, and the great beech woods,
and birds swinging in the rainy air; and I
remembered one pair of men and women,
and another and another, and then I fell to
thinking of a man whom I had known in
a foreign place, who at once loved and
hated — a thing to me incomprehensible. But
he was southern. Then I heard the silence
broken by the Poet, who was saying to the
Sailor :

" Now it is your turn."

And the Sailor said, " By all means if
you will," and very rapidly began : " My
first love lived in the town of Lisbon, after
the earthquake and before the Revolution,
when I was a lad of seventeen, and already
very weary of the sea. She, upon her side,
may have been thirty-six or a trifle more,
but in that climate women age quickly.
Our romance was short ; it lasted but five

OF HIS FIRST LOVE 225

hours. Indeed, my leave on shore was not
much longer, for I was serving in the galley,
shame be it said ; but a boy must earn his
living, and rather than be late on board I
would have fled to the hills."

*' What was her name ? " said the Poet.

" I do not know," answered the Sailor, " I
did not ask. . . . But one moment ! . . . I
am not so sure that this was my first love
... I fear the vividness of my recollection
has misled me. Unless I am quite wrong,"
he went on, musing slowly, '* it was in New-
haven, before we set sail upon that Lusitanian
cruise, that I met my first love, by name
Belina ... or stay I . . . Wrong again, for
that was my second ship. Now you ask me
and I begin to search my memory, my first
love was not there at all, but at a place called
Erith, in London River. At least I think
so. . . .

" Bear with me a moment, gentlemen," he
said piteously, putting his hand to his fore-
head ; " the years have trampled up my young
affection. . . . Yes, it was that woman at
Erith, Joan they called her (did the men).

226 THE POET'S STORY

Joan 1 . . . Unless it was that curious and
rather unpleasant woman who lived on the
far side of Foulness, with her father, and
used to row out with fruit and things when
the tide was off the mud, and just before
the boats waiting to get through the Swin
had water enough to weigh anchor. ... It
was one of the two I am fairly sure. The
younger woman in Goole (for when I was
young, though few things of any size went
up river as far as that, we did) was, if I
remember right, not a Love at all but a
mere Consoler "

The Poet. " I do not think you are serious ;
I don't think you understand what you
say."

The Sailor. "Why, then, since you know
better, you can give me your own list ; I
have no doubt it will do as well as mine,
for my memory is very confused upon these
matters."

The Poet. " I cannot tell you anything
about your affairs, and it seems you cannot
tell us either; but I can very well describe
my own, since I must do so by the terms

OF HIS FIRST LOVE 227

of our agreement, though 1 would rather
keep silent.

"I was passing in a certain year, just at
the end of my school-days, by a path which
led between the two lakes at Bringhanger.
It is about a mile from the house, and
people do not often pass that way, though
it is one of the most beautiful places in the
world. The first green was upon the trees,
but their buds were still so small that
one could see the hills near by through
their open branches, and the wind, though
it was gentle, looked cold upon the surface
of the mere, for it was very early morning.
Then it was that I saw upon the further
shore, mixed as it were with the foliage
and half-veiled by reeds, a young woman
whom I was not to see again; who she
was or by what accident she came there
I have never known. I made at once to
watch her form as it passed into the boughs
of that lakeside and made in the tracery of
them a sort of cloud, as I thought, so that
I was not certain for a moment whether
I had really seen a human thing or no.

228 WHETHER PONDS

Immediately, as though she had melted into
the trees, she was gone, and I went on my
way. But as I wandered, going eastwards
towards Arun, this vision grew and fixed
itself within my mind, and then for the next
days of lonely travel in the County from
inn to inn, it became my companion, until
at last I took it for my fellow-traveller.
I have kept it in my heart ever since."

The Sailor. " Great heavens, what a lie I "

The Poet answered angrily that it was no
lie, but the Sailor stood his ground.

" It is a lie," said he, *' and a literary lie,
which is the most contemptible of all lies."

" I cannot prove it," answered the Poet
sullenly. " I cannot even prove that what
I saw was human."

" No," said the Sailor, " you cannot, for
you got it in a book, or you mean to put
it in a book ; but all that kind of talk has
no more flesh and blood in it than the rot-
talk of the literary men who write about
huntin' in Grub Street. Wow ! I would
not be seen dead in a field with such flimsy
stuff."

RHYMES WITH BRONZE 229

" It was then I wrote," said the Poet
dreamily, as though there were no one by,
" five lines which enshrine her memory."

And as he recited them the Sailor put up
first his thumb and then one finger after
another, to mark the completion of each line
and the rhymes.

" The colour of the morning sky
Was like a shield of bronze,
The something or other was something or other."

" The what ? " said the Sailor.

" I cannot remember the exact words," said
the Poet, "and I have never been able to
complete that line properly, but I have the
rhythm of it in my head right enough," and
he went on —

" Her little feet came wandering by
The edges of the ponds."

**Now I've got you," shouted the Sailor
triumphantly, " * ponds ' does not rhyme with
* bronze.' "

" Yes it does ! " said the Poet, with ex-
citement. "It's just one of those new
rhymes one ought to use. One does not

(1,655) Q

230 MYSELF TELLS THE STORY

pronounce the ' d ' in pond. At least," he
added hurriedly, "not in the plural."

The Sailor appealed to Grizzlebeard.

" Grizzlebeard," he shouted, " the Poet is
telling lies and making bad rhymes I Grizzle-
beard I "

Then he looked closer and saw that
Grizzlebeard was asleep.

But at the shouting of the Sailor, "Eh?
What?" he said, waking with a start,
"have I missed a story?"

" Two," said I, " each duller and worse
than the last."

" Then I am glad I slept," said Grizzlebeard.

Myself. "You do well to be glad! The
Sailor lied about twenty wenches and the
Poet lied about one, but the Sailor's lies were
the more entertaining of the two, and also,
what is not the same, the more possible.
They were lying about their first loves, as
you may well believe."

Grizzlebeard (muttering). "Well, well,
small blame to them, we all do that more
or less. And you, Myself, have you told
your story ? "

OF HIS FIRST LOVE 281

The Sailor {eagerly). " No, he has not, he
has shirked it."

The Poet. " He has led us on, and he him-
self has said nothing, which is not fair."

Myself. " I was only waiting my turn, and
I shall be very happy to tell you those enter-
taining things. I make no secret of them.
That is not my religion, thank Heaven."

At this point I put on such gravity as the
circumstance demanded, and looking at my
companions in a sober fashion, so that they
might expect a worthy revelation, I took
from the ticket-pocket of my coat a sove-
reign, new minted, yellow red, stamped in
the effigy of the King, full-weighted, ex-
cellently clean and sound. And holding this
up between my finger and my thumb, 1
said :

" Here is my first love I Whom I met
when first I came out from the warmth of
home into the deserts of this world, and
who has ever been absolutely sure and true,
and has never changed in the minutest way,
but has ever been sterling and fixed and
secure. And in the service of this first love

232 AND SACRIFICES ALE

of mine I, in my turn, have been absolutely-
faithful, and from that loyalty I have never
for one moment swerved. Gentlemen, to
be faithful in that sort is a rare and a worthy
thing ! "

Then I put back the sovereign in my
pocket, gently and reverently, and taking
up the pewter I drank what was left in it,
and said to them in more solemn tones :

'* You see what I have done. I have
quite drained this tankard. It is empty now.
I did it chiefly because I felt inclined ; since
it is commonsense that we should never
forego any one of the few pleasures which
we may find to hand. But I did it also for
a symbol of what jolly satisfaction a man
may get if he will do what every man should
do ; that is, take life and its ladies as he finds
them during his little passage through the
dayHght, and his limping across the stage of
this world. So now you know."

But Grizzlebeard shook his head and said :

" All these things are follies I But since
the rain is over let us be oif again. It is
November : the days are brief ; and the light

KING CHARLES' TANKARD 233

will not last us long. Let us press forward
over Arun, and pursue our westward way
beneath the hills."

So we did as he bade us, crossing the long
bridge and seeing the water swirling through
on the strong brown tide, and so along the
causeway, and up the first ride into Hough-
ton, where is that little inn, " St. George and
the Dragon," at which King Charles the
Second, the first King of England to take
a salary and be a servant, drank as he fled
from Worcester many years ago. And we
went on that ancient way. that hollow way,

234 THE CLEAR SKY

which the generations and the generations
rolling upon wheels and marching upon
leather, all on their way to death, have
worn down so far below the level of the
brown ploughed land. We went past Bury
to Westburton, and still onwards to the
place where some dead Roman had his
palace built, near the soldiers' road, in a
place that looks at a great hollow of the
Downs and is haunted by the ruin of fifteen
hundred years. But we did not stop to look
at the stone pictures there, nor at that sacred
head of Winter wherein this southern lord
had bidden his slaves express the desolation
of our cold and of our leafless trees. We
went on through the steep, tumbled land,
down the sharp dip of Bignor, and up the
sharp bank of Sutton : always westward,
following the road. And as we went, with
the approach of evening the wind had cleared
the sky. There were no more clouds.
And as we went along the Sailor said :
" Poet, it is some time since you tried to
give us verse, and I would not press you, for
I know well enough that it is hard labour to

WE COMPETE IN SONG 235

you with that nasty sense of failure all the
time. None the less I will beg you to try
your hand, if only to amuse us, for there is
nothing lightens a road like a song, and we
have gone already many, many miles."

The Poet. " With all my heart, since we
are now upon the edge of Burton and its
ponds, which, with the trees along them,
and the heathy lands, and the way that the
whole setting of them look at the wall of the
Downs, is perhaps the most verse-producing
mile in the world. Inspired by this let me
give you the most enchanting of songs : —

* Oh gay ! But this is the spring of the year !
The sun

The Sailor, " Halt ! Halt at once 1 You
have gone mad, if indeed to such brains as
yours such dignities are reserved. Has it not
yet sunk into that corked head of yours that
it is All-Hallows ? For though it is notorious
that poets neither see what is before them,
nor hear, nor smell, but work in the void
(and hence their flimsiness), yet, if you cannot
see the bare branches and the dead leaves,

236 THE POET'S SONG

nor smell autumn, nor catch the quality of
the evening, for the Lord's sake write nothing.
It would be far better so."

The Poet. " I am not writing but singing,
and it is my pleasure to sing of spring time.
Whether I sing well or no you cannot tell
until I have accomplished my little song.
But you have put me out and I must
begin again."

Whereupon with less merriment, but full
of courage, he took up that strain once more.

" Oh gay ! But this is the spring of the year !
The sun shall gladden me all the day,
And we'll go gathering May, my dear,
And we'll go gathering May ;

For the skies are broad and the throstle is here . . ,
And we'll go gathering May."

When the Poet had sung this again (and
his voice flattened towards the end of the
short thing), the Sailor, clasping his hands
behind his back, began to move more slowly,
and so compelled us to slacken pace. He
cast his eyes upon the ground, and for a
while was lost beneath the surface. He then
quoted in a deep tone, but to himself :

IS CONDEMNED 287

«0 God! O Montreal!"

The Poet. " I don't understand."

TJie Sailor. " No, you would not."

Grizzlebeard {kindly). *' It is a quotation,
Poet. It is a quotation from the poem of
an Englishman who went to Montreal one
day and found that they had put Discobolos
into breeches. Whereupon this Englishman,
suffering such an adventure among such
Colonials, wrote an ode to celebrate the
event, and mournfully repeated throughout
that ode, time and again, * O God ! O
Montreal!'"

Myself. " Yes, since that time it has passed
into a proverb, and is used to emphasise those
occasions on which the mind of man has
fallen short of its high mission in any
department of art."

The Poet. "Oh!"

The Sailor {looking up). " Tell me. Poet,
did you write that yourself?"

The Poet {defiantly). "Yes."

The Sailor {after a shofrt pause). " Tell me,
Poet, what is a throstle ? "

The Poet. " I don't know."

238 AND ADVISED MUSIC

T'he Sailor. " I thought so. And tell me.
Poet, does he come out in the spring ? "

The Poet. " I daresay. Most things do."

The Sailor. " Well, well, we won't quarrel ;
but if you have written much more like this,
publish it, and we will have some fun."

The Poet was now thoroughly annoyed, not
being so companionable a man (by reason of
his trade) as he might be. For men become
companionable by working with their bodies
and not with their weary noddles, and the
spinning out of stuff from oneself is an in-
human thing.

So I said to him to soothe him :

" I am no judge of verse. Poet, but I think
it would go very well to real music. Will
you not get some one else to put music to it ? "

The Poet answered angrily :

" No, I will not, and since the Sailor thinks
it is so easy to write good verse on the spur of
the moment, let him try."

The Sailor [gaily). " Why, I can do these
things in my sleep. I have written the loveli-
est things on my shirt-cufF before now, listen-
ing to public men at dinners. As also alone in

THE SAILOR'S SONG 239

those cells to which the police have sometimes
confined me for the hours between revelry
and morning, I have adorned the walls with
so many little, charming little, pointed little,
tender little, suggestive little, diaphanous
little Stop-shorts or There-you-are's as would,
were they published in a book, make me more
famous than last year's Lord Mayor."

Grizzlebeard. "Yes, but you have not
taken up the challenge."

The Sailor {easily). " I will do so at once.'*

And he rattled out :

" When open skies renew the year,
And yaffle under Gumber calls,
It's because the days are near
When open skies renew the year.

That under Burton waterfalls

The little pools are amber clear.

And yaffle, yaffle, yaffle, yaffle,

yaffle under Gumber calls."

Then he went on very rapidly :

" Now that is verse if you like I There
you have good verse, pinned and knowled ;
strong-set verse, mitred and joined without
glue I Lord ! I could write such verse for ever
and not feel it I But I care little for fame,

240 THE DUNCTON INN

and am at this moment rather for bread and
cheese, seeing that we are coming near the
Cricketers' Arms at Duncton, a house of call
famous for this : that men sit there and eat
to get strength for the climbing of Duncton
Hill, or, if they are going the other way
about, they sit there and eat after their
descent thereof."

Tlie Poet. "It is all very well, but that
verse of yours is not yours at all. It is
Elizabethan and water, and let me tell you
that the Elizabethan manner can be diluted
about as successfully as beer. Mix your
ale with water half and half, and give me
news of it. So with Elizabethan when you
moderns think that you have tapped the
barrel."

The Sailor. "What you say is not true.
This is my own verse, and if you tell me it
is in the manner of those who wrote at £40
the go under Queen Elizabeth, I am not
ashamed. Many men lived in that reign who
wrote with dexterity."

The Poet. " Well, then, what is a Yaffle ? "

The Sailor. " Why, it is a real bird."

THE GREAT AUK 241

The Poet {suidily). "Yes, like the Great
Auk."

The Sailor. " No, not like the Great Auk
at all ; for the Great Auk of whom it is
written :

* Here the Great Auk, a bird with hairy legs,
Arrives in early spring and lays its eggs '

(and that was written of Beaehy Head) is dead.
But the Yaffle is alive and is a woodpecker,
as you would know if you poets had not all
your senses corked, as I have said. For when
the woodpecker cries ' Yaffle ' in the woods,
all the world of it, except poets, is aware.

*' Moreover, in my song there are no
women. One knows your bad poet by an
excess thereof; but of this sex in the senti-
mental manner I have also written, saying
in majestic rhyme: —

' If all the harm that women do
Were put into a barrel
And taken out and drowned in Looe
Why, men would never quarrel ! ' "

Myself. " How any man can speak ill of
women in the same breath with the Looe
stream that races through the sea not far

242 THE WIND OF THE OWERS

from the Owers Light is more than I can
understand, seeing that no man hears the
name of the Owers Light without remember-
ing that song which was sung to a woman,
and which goes : —

' The heavy wind, the steady wind that blows
beyond the Owers,
It blows beyond the Owers for you and me !..."*

The Poet. *' It seems to me you are not
of the trade ; you are choppy in verse, very
short-winded, halting; spavined, I think."

The Sailor. " Why I I have sung the
longest songs of you all ! And since you
challenge me, I will howl you one quite
rotund and complete, but I warn you, your
hair will stand on end ! "

Grizzlebeard. " I dread the Sailor. He is
blasphemous and lewd."

The Sailor. " Judge when you have heard.
It is a carol."

The Poet. " But it is not Christmas."

The Sailor. " Neither is it spring, yet by
licence we sang our songs of springtime —
and for that . . . Well, let me seize you all.

THE SAILOR'S CAROL 243

It has a title — not my own. We call this
song 'Noel.'"

Myself {prettily). "And I congratulate
you, Sailor, on your whimsical originality and
pretty invention in titles."

The Sailor—

"Noel! Noel! Noel! Noel!
A Catholic tale have I to tell :
And a Christian song have I to sing
While all the bells in Arundel ring.

** I pray good beef and I pray good beer
This holy night of all the year.
But I pray detestable drink for them
That give no honour to Bethlehem.

" May all good fellows that here agree
Drink Audit Ale in heaven with me.
And may all my enemies go to hell !
Noel! Noel! Noel! Noel!
May all my enemies go to hell !
Noel! Noel!"

Grizzlebeard. " Rank blasphemy as I said,

244 MR. JUSTICE HONEYBUBBLE'S

and heresy, which is worse. For at Christmas
we should in particular forgive our enemies."

The Sailor. *' I do. This song is about
those that do not forgive me."

The Poet, "And it is bad verse, like all
the rest."

The Sailor. "Go drown yourself in milk
and water ; it is great, hefty howl- verse, as
strong and meaty as that other of mine was
lovely and be-winged."

Grizzlebeard. " What neither the Poet nor
you seem to know, Sailor, is that the quarrels
of versifiers are tedious to standers-by, so let
us go into the Cricketers' Arms and eat as
you say, in God's name, and occupy ourselves
with something pleasanter than the disputed
lyric."

Myself. " Very well then, let us go into
the Cricketers' Arms, where Mr. Justice
Honeybubble went when I was a boy, and
there delivered his famous Opinion : his
Considered Opinion, his Opinion of perma-
nent value, his Opinion which is the glory
of the law."

" What opinion was that ? " said Grizzle-

CONSIDERED OPINION 245

beard, going through the inn door, and we
following him.

" I can tell you without much difficulty,"
said I, "if you will listen, but I warn you
it is a dull, dull thing. Then, for that matter
so was that historical lecture of yours upon
the Sussex War. But I listened to that, so
now you shall listen to me."

They sat down not very well pleased, but
I assured them that when they had heard it
they would understand more law than most.
" For the law," said I, " is not the dull subject
some think it, but a very fascinating trade,
full of pleasant whims and tricks for throw-
ing an opponent. It is not all a routine of
thrusting poor men in prison, as is too
commonly believed, and as I have notes
here of what that great Judge, Mr. Justice
Honeybubble, said and did when he harangued
the men of Duncton in the Cricketers' Arms
twenty years ago, when I was a boy, and as
that feat of his is still famous throughout
this part of the County, you will do well to
listen." They ordered their beer therefore,
and I had mine free, as is the custom of

(1,65R) 1^

246 MR. JUSTICE HONEYBUBBLE'S

the County for the one who tells the story,
and then taking certain notes from my
pocket-book, and putting them in order as is
necessary when we are to follow technical
matters, I gave it them broadside.

"Well, then, Mr. Justice Honeybubble
was a man full of sane humour, my friends.
He was of a healthy habit of body. He was
a man, as are many of the law, who preserved
a vigorous gait into old age, and an expression
of alertness in his limbs and his eyes. His
face was ruddy, his eyebrows were thick, his
white hair was close, and there was plenty of it.

" It was his pleasure to take long walks
when his duties gave him leisure, and he
especially chose these grassy uplands; and
once he came aswinging down by what used to
be, but is not, Glatting Beacon, and so through
the Combe and the leafless beeches of Burton
Hanger to Duncton and the Cricketers'
Arms. It was evening, the air was cold and
pure. He strode steadily down the steep
road, swinging that walking-stick or rather
club which was his dearest companion. In
such a mood and manner did he enter this

CONSIDERED OPINION 247

inn where we are now. He entered it with
the object of eating and drinking something
before going on to find the train at Petworth ;
for in the days of which I speak pubHc
refreshment was permitted to all.

" He was delighted to find, in the main
room, a gathering; it was of peasants who
were discussing a point of difficulty. They
respectfully saluted him upon his entrance, for
he always dressed with care, and the constant
exercise of bullying men who could not reply
had given him a commanding manner.

** He stood before the fire surveying them
in a kindly but authoritative way, and
listened closely while they discussed the
matter before them ; nor was it easy to dis-
cover in what precisely their difficulty lay,
save that it concerned two disputants, one
George, another Roland, and that the matter
of it was thus : — Two pigs, ' Maaster,' ' Masr '
Burt, the change of a sovereign, and Chichester
market.

" Roland had put his case not without fire,
and had appealed to right being right.

** George had replied in tones of indignation

248 MR. JUSTICE HONEYBUBBLE'S

that he was not of that type of character
which submits to the imputation of folly.

" Each had reposed his case upon the known
personalities and conditions of ' Maaster,'
' Masr ' Burt, Chichester market, current
coin, and pigs. When, after a little silence,
the assembly, deliberating over their mugs,
approached the problem, they did so by slowly
reciting each in turn at intervals of about
thirty seconds the ritual phrases, *ArI'
'That's it,' and in the case of the eldest
man at the end of the table the declaration
native to this holy valley, ' Mubbe soa :
mubbe noa.'

" Mr. Justice Honeybubble, who had himself
been compelled upon one occasion to sum up
for no less than four hours and twenty-three
minutes, took pity upon these his fellow-men,
and said :

" ' Perhaps, gentlemen, I can be of some
use to you : I am, chrm, chrm, accustomed
to the weighing of, er, evidence (in the fullest
sense of that word), and 1 have had no little,
chrm, experience in matters which have been
laid before me, chrm, in, er, another capacity.'

CONSIDERED OPINION 249

** The peasants, who took him for no less
than a noble Justice of the Peace, land-
owner, and perhaps colonel of some auxiliary-
force, respectfully acceded to his desire, and
were not disappointed when the humane
jurist ordered fresh ale for the whole com-
pany, including himself. He then sat down
in a brown wooden chair with arms, which
stood before the fire, crossed his legs, put
the tips of his fingers together, and faced
his audience with an expression peculiarly
solemn which partly awed and partly fas-
cinated the disputants and the areopagus at
large.

" Roland and George had just begim to
state their case again and to speak both at
once and angrily, for they were unaccustomed
to forensic ways, when the Judge silenced
them with a wave of his large white right
hand, and thus gave tongue :

" * We have here,' said he, ' what lawyers
call an issue ; that is, a dispute in opinion,
or, at any rate, in statement, as to an objec-
tive truth. We eliminate all factors upon
which the parties are agreed, and especially y"*

250 MR. JUSTICE HONEYBUBBLE'S

here he leant forward and clenched his fist in
an impressive manner, ' all those subjective
impressions v^^hich, however important in
themselves, can have no place,' and here he
waved his right arm in a fine sweeping
gesture, * before a civil tribunal.'

" At this point George, who imagined from
the tone of the Bench that things were going
ill for him, put on an expression of stubborn
resolution ; while Roland, who had come to
a similar conclusion and thought his cause in
jeopardy, looked positively sullen. But the
Assessors who sat around were as greatly
moved as they were impressed, and assumed
attitudes of intelligent interest, concentrating
every power of their minds upon the expert's
exposition of judgment.

*' * So far, so good,' said Mr. Justice Honey-
bubble, breathing a deep sigh and drinking
somewhat from the tankard at his side. * So
far, so good. Now, from the evidence that
has been laid before me it is clear that Burt
as a third party can neither concur nor enter
any plea of Demurrer or Restraint. That J
he added sharply, turning suddenly upon an

CONSIDERED OPINION 251

old man at the end of the table, ' would
be Barottage.' The old man, who was by
profession a hedger and ditcher, nodded
assent. *And Barottage,' thundered the
worthy Judge, 'is something so repugnant
to the whole spirit of our English law, that
I doubt if any would be found with the
presumption to defend it ! ' His electrified
audience held their breaths while he con-
tinued in somewhat milder tones, ' I admit
that it has been assimilated to Maintenance by
no less an authority than Lord Eldon in his
decision of the matter in Crawford v. Croke.
But in the Desuetude of Maintenance, and
the very proper repeal of Graham's Act in
1848 . . . or possibly 1849 ' (frowning slightly)
* I am not sure. . . . However, the very proper
repeal of Graham's Act has left Barottage,'
and here his voice rose again and vibrated
with his fullest tones, 'has left Barottage in
all its native hideousness, an aUen and there-
fore an iniquitous and a malign accretion upon
the majestic body of our English Common
Law.' At this point a slight cheer from
Roland, who saw things brightening, was

252 MR. JUSTICE HONEYBUBBLES

suppressed by a glance like an angry search-
light from the eye of the Judge, who con-
cluded in full diapason, * Nor shall it have any
mercy from me, so long as I have the strength
and authority to sit upon this Bench.'

" Mr. Justice Honeybubble drank again, and
as he w^as evidently reposing his voice for
the moment, the now terrified but fascinated
agriculturists murmured profound applause.
Their patriotism was moved, the tradition of
centuries rose in their blood, and had an
appeal been made to them at that moment
they would have shed it willingly, however
clumsily, in defence of that vast fabric of the
Law. ... In a low, regular and impressive
voice which marked the change of subject,
Mr. Justice Honeybubble continued :

" * Now, gentlemen, consider the pigs. It
often happens, nay, it must happen in the
course of judicial proceedings, that our deci-
sion relies not only on the balance of human
testimony (and you are there, remember, to
judge fact not law), but upon the fitting
together of circumstances as to which that
testimony relates, and in noting the actions

CONSIDERED OPINION 253

or the situation of things or even of persons
incapable in their nature of entering that
witness-box' (and here he pointed to a large
stuffed fish in a glass case, towards which all
his audience turned with one accord, looking
round again in a somewhat blank manner)

* and telling us upon oath ' (the word oath
in a deep bass) ' what they themselves saw
and heard in a manner that shall convey the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth. You cannot subpoena a pig '

*' ' Ar ! zo you zay. Ar ! ' broke in the
excited George, who was now confident that
by some trick of cunning he was being de-
prived of his pigs, * Ar ! zo you . . .'

" 'Silence !' roared Mr. Justice Honeybubble.

* Am I to be interrupted sitting here on this
Bench, not even by counsel, but by one of the
parties to the case ? I trust I may never have
to call attention again in the course of my
duties to so disgraceful a breach of the im-
memorial traditions of an English Court of
Justice ! SnfF ! . . . I repeat, we cannot
subpoena a pig' (he repeated it with stern
eyes fixed full on the unfortunate George).

254 MR. JUSTICE HONEYBUBBLE'S

' But what we can do, gentlemen, is to ask
ourselves what in all reasonable probability
would have been the case if under those
circumstances, neglecting for the moment
what has been said relative to any letters or
affidavits put in, were it not what the plaintiff
has supposed it to be. Chrm ! '

"Here, as the intricacy of detail was making
the exposition somewhat difficult to follow,
all leant forward and summoned their very
keenest attention to bear upon the problem.

" * The decision would depend,' went on Mr.
Justice Honey bubble in a tone of finality and
relief, * upon the conclusion at which you
would arrive in the former or in the latter
concatenation of events.'

" He leant back in his chair, spread out his
hands amply towards them, as offering them
well-weighed, unbiassed, and unmoved by a
tittle, the great body of evidence which he
had sifted and arranged with such marvellous
skill.

" ' It is for you, gentlemen,' he concluded,
rising, ' to say which of the two conclusions
in your conscience after all that you have

CONSIDERED OPINION 255

heard is the true one. Remember that if
there is the faintest doubt in the mind of any-
one of you it is his solemn duty to give the
benefit of the doubt to that party in the suit
who would have most advantage from it. I
believe I have not influenced you in that de-
cision to the one side or to the other. I hope
I have not. Certainly I can speak from my
heart and say that in this very grave and
important business I have tried to preserve
and lay before you a general view which
should be absolutely impartial; and now I
must leave you to your decision.'

*' With this Sir Thingumbob Honeybubble
nodded to all present, seized his staff, and,
passing briskly through the door, left them
drowned in a tremendous silence. As he
went out he had the kindly thought to order
the replenishment of their mugs, and so,
glancing at his watch, he went at a smart
pace down the road past Burton Rough to the
station. But he went through the darkness
smiling to himself all the way and humming
a little tune.

*' Now was not that a fine full-fed judge and

256 GRIZZLEBEARD AND THE

worthy of being remembered as he is through-
out this valley for that famous decision ? "
• •••••

When I had told them all this we took the
road again, thinking about lawyers and talk-
ing of them, and from that the conversation
came by an easy stage to moneylenders, and
from them again to traitors, and so we passed
in review all the principal activities of man-
kind in the space of about one mile, until we
had exhausted every matter, and there was
no more to be said.

After this we all fell silent and tailed off,
Grizzlebeard going ahead and getting further
and further from us in great thoughtful
strides, and the Poet about half-way between;
but the Sailor and I taking it easy, for it
was agreed between us that we should all
meet at the next Inn whatever it might be.
That Inn we found no more than two miles
along the road.

And when we had picked up the Poet, who
was waiting there for us, he told us that
Grizzlebeard had gone in about a quarter of
an hour before, and that he feared that he

STRANGE PHILOSOPHER 257

must have got into some entertainment, for
all that time he had not come out or made
a sign ; so, said the Poet, we ought all to go
in and find him.

So we turned into that little house as in
duty bound, seeing that it was five miles since
we had last acknowledged the goodness of
God in the drinking of ale, which is a kind
of prayer, as it says in the motto :

" Laborare est orare sed potare clarior"

which signifies that work is noble, and
prayer its equal, but that drinking good ale
is a more renowned and glorious act than
any other to which man can lend himself.
And on this account it is that you have a
God of Wine, and of various liquors sundry
other Gods, that is. Imaginations of men or
Demons, but in the matter of ale no need
for symbol, only that it is King.

But when we came up to the house, and
turned into it, we found that Grizzlebeard,
who had gone in already before us, was in that
short time deeply engaged with a Stranger
who, maugre Heaven, was drinking tea 1

258 GRIZZLEBEARD AND

There they sat, hardly noticing our entry,
and were at it hammer and tongs in an
argument.

The Stranger was a measly sort of fellow
in a cloak, tall, and with a high voice and
words of a cultured kind, and his eyes were
like dead oysters, which are unpleasing things ;
and he and Grizzlebeard, though they had so
recently met, were already in the midst of
as terrible a balderdash of argument as ever
the good angels have permitted on this sad
earth.

We spoke to Grizzlebeard loudly, but the
stranger paid no attention to us.

We were very much astonished and looked
round -eyed at this, but Grizzlebeard only
looked up and nodded. He was too much
caught by the discussion to do more.

" I should meet that," he was saying, " by
a dichotomy."

*' By a what ? " said the Sailor.

The Poet. *' By something German I
think."

But Grizzlebeard, paying no heed to us at all,
said to his earnest fellow : '* Not teleological ;

THE PHILOSOPHER 259

you must not think that ; but, if you like, still
less ateleological."

Myself. " Good, nor ontological I hope, for
that is the very Devil."

The Stranger, purposely ignoring us, then
replied to Grizzlebeard alone :

" The argument cannot be met thus, because
though you will not postulate the reality of
time as a process, you must admit it as a
dimension."

" Not under compulsion ! " said the Sailor
fiercely.

But Grizzlebeard, as though we three were
not there, replied to the Stranger :

"The word ' dimension ' is a petitio elenchV

The Stranger {eagerly). " There I pin you,
that is sheer Monism ! "

Grizzlebeard {moi^e eagerly still). "Not at
all! Not at all! On the contrary. Monism
would be your position."

The Sailor {to the Poet and Myself). " Let
us go hence, my children, and drink in the
bar with common men, for the Devil will
very soon come in by the window and fly
away with these philosophers. Let us be

260 GRIZZLEBEARD AND

apart in some safe place when the struggle
begins."

With that we all went out and stayed
about ten minutes, drinking with certain
labouring men, and paying for their drinks,
because we were better off than they. And
to these men we told such lies as we thought
might entertain them, and then, after about
twenty minutes, the Sailor said to us :

The Sailor. " Those two hateful ones we
have left must by this time have come to the
foundations of the world, and have thoroughly
thrashed it out how it was that God laid
down the roots of the hills, and why mill-
stones and the world are round, and even
whether they have free will or no : a thing
never yet discovered save through the Baston-
nade. But come, let us rout them out I
I know this philosophy : when men are at it
they chain themselves down for hours."

With that he led us back to the room, and
sure enough we heard them still at it hammer
and tongs, and Grizzlebeard was saying, lean-
ing forward, and half standing up in his
excitement ;

THE PHILOSOPHER 261

" Why then, there you are I With the
content of reaUty expressed in contradictory
terms 1 "

The Stranger. " There is no contradiction,
but a variety of aspect, which is resolved in
a higher unity."

The Sailor (in a solemn tone). " Grizzle-
beard 1 Darkness will soon fall upon the
Weald, and before it falls we must be beyond
GrafFham, nay, far beyond. So make up
your mind, either to differ with this honest
gentleman, or to give way to him here and
at once. And in any case you are to find
your God " (and here he took out his watch)
"within exactly ten minutes from now, for
if you do not we will find Him for you in a
sudden way. So in ten minutes find us also
in the common bar, or perish in your sins I "

Then we all three went out again, and
heard from the common bar a singing going
on, the chorus of which was Golier, which is
indeed the true chorus of all songs, and the
footing or underwork of every sort of common
chant and roar of fellowship. But when we
came in again the poorer men from shyness

(1,655) a

262 SONG OF DUKE WILLIAM

stopped. Only the Sailor said to them, ** I
think we must sing you a new song, which
they are singing, out Horsham way, of Duke
William ; but you must remember it, for I
cannot write it down." And with that he
sang at them this verse :

" Duke William was a wench's son,

His grandfer was a tanner !
He drank his cider from the tun,

Which is the Norman manner :
His throne was made of oak and gold,

His bow-shaft of the yew —
That is the way the tale is told,

I doubt if it be true !

" But what care I for him ?
My tankard is full to the brim,
And I'll sing Elizabeth^ Dorothy,
Margaret, Mary, Dorinda, Perse-
phone, Miriam,
Pegotty taut and trim.

" The men that sailed to Normandy

Foul weather may they find ;
For banging about in the waist of a ship

Was never to my mind.
They drink their rum in the glory-hole

In quaking and in fear ;
But a better man was left behind,

And he sits drinking beer.

SONG OF DUKE WILLIAM 263

" But what care I for the swine ?

They never were fellows of mine !

And I'll sing Elizabeth, Dorothy,

Margaret, Mary, Dorinda,

Persephone, Miriam, Pegotty,

Jezebel, Topsy, Andromeda."

The Poet. " To your aid with She-dactyls —

" Magdalen, Emily, Charity, Agatha, Beatrice,
Anna, Cecilia, Maud, Cleopatra, Selene,
and Jessica. . . ."

The Sailor {clinching it) —

" Barbara stout and fine."

Myself {to the company). " Now is not that
a good song, and does it not remind you of
Duke William, who so kindly came over here
to this county many years ago, and rid us of
north countrymen for ever ? "

One man in the company said that he
could not remember this song, but wished it
written down, to which the Sailor answered
that this could not be because it was copy-
right, but that, God willing, he would be
passing that way again next year or the year
after, and then would give it them once more,
so that they could have it by heart, and when

264 THE SAILOR

he had said this, he put down money so that
they all might drink again when he had
gone, and led us back to the room where
the Stranger and Grizzlebeard were. But he
took with him a full tankard of beer, and that
for reasons which will presently be seen.

For he stopped outside the door behind which
we could hear the voices of the disputants
still at it with their realities and their contents,
and their subjectivities and their objectivities,
and their catch-it-as-it-flies, and he said to us :

The Sailor. " Have you not seen two dogs
wrangling in the street, and how they will
Gna ! Gna ! and Wurrer-Wurrer all to no
purpose whatsoever, but solely because it is
the nature of dogs thus dog-like to be-dog
the wholesome air with dogged and canicular
noise of no purport, value, or conclusion?
And when this is on have you not seen how
good housewives, running from their doors,
best stop the noisome noise and drown it
altogether by slop, bang, douches of cold
wet from a pail, which does dis-spirit the
empty disputants, and, causing them imme-
diately to unclinch, humps them off to more

MAKES HIS PLAN 265

useful things ? So it is with philosophers,
who will snarl and yowl and worry the
clean world to no purpose, not even intend-
ing a solution of any sort or a discovery, but
only the exercise of their vain clapper and
clang. Also they have made for this same
game as infernal a set of barbaric words
as ever were blathered and stumbled over
by Attila the king when the Emperor of
Constantinople's Court Dentist pulled out his
great back teeth for the enlargement of his
jaw. Now this kind of man can be cured
only by baptism, which is of four kinds, by
water, by blood, and by desire : and the
fourth kind is of beer. So watch me and
what I will do."

Then he went in ahead of us, and we all
came in behind, and when we came in neither
Grizzlebeard nor the Stranger looked up for
one moment, but Grizzlebeard was saying,
with vast scorn :

" You are simply denying cause and effect,
or rather efficient causality."

To which the Stranger answered solemnly,
« I do 1 "

266 AND BAPTIZES THE

On hearing this reply the Sailor, very
quickly and suddenly, hurled over him all
that was in the pint pot of beer, saying
hurriedly as he did so, "I baptize you in the
name of the five senses," and having done
so, ran out as hard as he could with us two
at his heels, and pegged it up the road at top
speed, and never drew rein until he got to
the edge of Jockey's Spinney half a mile
away, and we following, running hard close
after, and there we found him out of breath
and laughing, gasping and catching, and
glorying in his great deed.

*' Now," said he, "I warrant you, Grizzle-
beard will come up in good time, and though
he will be angry he will be confused."

Sure enough, Grizzlebeard came up after
us, somewhat more than a quarter of an hour
behind, and though he was angry, the hill had
taken up some of his anger and had blown
him, and when he had cursed at the Sailor,
and had told him that the Stranger was, in
a sense, his guest, the Sailor bade him be at
ease, saying that the Stranger was, in a sense,
his boredom and intolerable drag, and that

PHILOSOPHER WITH BEER 267

had he not done violence we should never
have got on the road at all.

" But tell me," he added, *' did you not
settle anything by the time we got away?
You had been at it a good hour, and one
would think that men could find out in that
time whether they had a Maker or no, and
what Dimension was and what Degree."

But Grizzlebeard was surly and would not
answer him, and in the slow recovery of his
temper the road seemed long enough : more
particularly through the Poet, who, thinking
to be genial, began to rattle off a judgment
of the world and to say that it was a good
thing to agree, and also to bend oneself
to practical matters ; and thence to talking
of fanatics, and so to maundering on of
authority, and saying that any man could do
well with his life if he only had the sense not
to offend those who were his superiors on his
way upwards, and to pay decent attention to
what those in control desired of him.

To this sort of balance Grizzlebeard, being
the oldest of us, would have agreed ; but in
his anger, which, though it was declining, still

268 STORY OF THE POLITICIAN

smouldered, he chose to contradict, and he
said in a gruff way :

Grizzlebeard. "What our fathers called
'selling one's soul.' Yes; it is the easiest
and the worst thing a man can do."

The Sailor. " The worst, perhaps, though
I'm not so sure of it, but the easiest, oh no I
And I say I am not so sure it is the worst.
For one never sells anything unless one is
hard up, and hard-up men are never really
wicked; it is the rich that are wicked. At
least so I have always been told by the poor,
who are not only the great majority of men
and therefore Hkely to be right, but also
have no interest to serve in saying what they
say. . . . But easy, no I Do not tell me it
is easy, so long as there stands for a dreadful
example the story of Peter the Politician,
which all the world should hear."

Grizzlebeard. "And all the world has
heard it."

The Sailor {sweetly). " But not you, Grizzle-
beard, so I must give it at due length to spin
the road out and to do you especial honour."

Grizzlebeard (milder). " Do so, then. Even

WHO SOLD HIS SOUL 269

your tale may be less dull than tramping the
last hour of a day in silence."

The Sailor. " You must know, then, that
Peter the Politician, after having sold every
public honour which he could drag upon the
counter and every pubUc office and every kind
of power except his own, and after he had
sold his country and his friends and his father
and his mother and even his children, and his
self-respect of course, and all the rest of it,
had nothing left to sell but his very soul.
But sell that he must, for have money he
must ; without money no man can live the
Great Life and go out to dine in the new
hotels that are built out of iron and plaster,
and the Lord have mercy on us all I

" Well then, Peter the Politician did up his
soul in a little brown paper parcel, all beauti-
fully sealed with sealing-wax and tied up with
expensive string ; for the public pay for these
things where politicians are concerned.

" He did up his soul, did I say, into this
little parcel ? I err ! It was his secretary
that did it up; not his unpaid secretary — his
real secretary, a humble little man.

270 STORY OF THE POLITICIAN

" For you must know that politicians have
three kinds of secretaries : the first kind, who
may be called Secretarius Maximus, is a rich
man's son, and his place has been paid for : he
is called secretary so that he may be advanced
to office, and he does nothing at aU except
ride about in a motor-car and come and sit by
when there is any jabbering to be done for his
master. Then there is the second kind of
secretary, who is usually a friend's son, and
may be called Secretarius Minor ; he expects
no advancement to a politician's future, but
only some little job or other in the Civil
Service after his years of labour. And his
labour is this : to teU the third secretary what
he has to do. Now this third secretary, who
may be called Secretarius Minimus, receives
the sum of thirty shillings every Saturday,
and for this he must sweat and toil and be
at beck and call, and go to bed late and get
up early, and wear himself to a shadow, and
then at forty go and be a secretary at less
wages if he can get the job, or else hang him-
self or stand in a row for soup on the Embank-
ment ; and there is an end of him.

WHO SOLD HIS SOUL 271

"Well, then, I say it was this third or
working secretary who had done up Peter the
Politician's soul in a pretty little parcel, in
brown paper paid out of the taxes, with fine
red seals paid out of the taxes, and with
strong, thin, and splendid string paid out of
the taxes ; and since the politician was very
careful about his soul and it did not weigh
much, he took it with him himself and set off
to the Devil's office to sell it ; and where that
office was he knew very well, for he had
spent most of his time there while he was a
young man, and had served his apprenticeship
in another part of the same building.

"When Peter the Politician sent in his
card he was received with great courtesy by
the Limbo-man who kept the doors, and he
was asked to sit down on a chair in a sort of
little private outer room where distinguished
people await the pleasure of the Head Devil.

" In this little outer room there were one or
two books to read about problems, especially
marriage, and there were some prints upon
the wall which were not well done and which
the Devil had taken as a bad debt from a

272 STORY OF THE POLITICIAN

publisher ; and there was also a calendar,
but there were no Saints' Days marked on
it, as you may well believe, but only the
deaths of conspicuous people, and Peter the
Politician did not study it.

*' Now when he had been sitting there for
about an hour without the need of a fire,
there came in a neat httle tight little dressed-
up- to -the -nines little Imp in buttons, who
was very polite indeed, and told him how
sorry His Master was to keep Peter the
Politician waiting, but the fact was he was
in the midst of a great deal of business.
Then the little Imp went out and left Peter
the Politician alone — and he waited another
two hours.

" At the end of this time another taller and
older Imp, dressed not in buttons, but in a
fine tail-coat (for he was a Tailed Imp), came
in and apologised more than ever and said
that His Master the Head Devil was ex-
tremely sorry to keep Peter the Politician
waiting, but would he kindly send in what
his business was, and he hoped it would
immediately be attended to?

WHO SOLD HIS SOUL 273

"Then Peter the Politician answered in
his short, dignified way that he had come
to sell his soul.

" * Of course I Of course ! ' said the tail-
coated Imp. * Dear me I You must excuse
me ; we have so much to do to-day that we
are really run off our hooves. Of course,' he
added, anxiously polite, * there is a regular
office . . .'

"* Yes, yes, I know,' said Peter the Politician
as impatiently as his dignity would allow. * I
know all about that office, but under the
circumstances and seeing that I am known
here . . ,'

" * Yes, of course ! ' said the big Imp again,
and he went out hurriedly, and Peter the
Politician was kept waiting another two
hours.

"He hummed a little and he shuffled his feet,
and he drummed with his fingers, and he be-
gan very seriously to think whether he would
not go somewhere else, only he knew of no
one out of Hell who wanted his soul. So he
sighed at last and continued to wait with as
much resignation as he could.

274 STORY OF THE POLITICIAN

"And after another two hours there came
in a very tall, gentlemanly, and deep-voiced
Major Devil, who told him how exceedingly
sorry he was that His Master should have
to keep him waiting, especially now they
knew the nature of his business, but the
pressure of work that day was really awful 1
And would Peter the PoUtician, for this
once, be kind enough to send in his offer,
because the Head Devil really could not
come out?

" So Peter the Politician said severely —

" * Luckily I have brought the goods with
me.' And he handed the Major Devil his
nice little brown paper parcel, and the Major
Devil went out apologising.

" Then Peter the Politician was kept waiting
another two hours. At the end of it there
came in a really superior Devil with his hair
parted in the middle and a stand up- and-
turndown collar, and the accent, and every-
thing. He sat down genially at the same
table as Peter the PoUtician, and leant
towards him and said most affably and
courteously—

WHO SOLD HIS SOUL 275

" * My dear sir, my Master is very sorry
indeed, but there has been a terrible slump
in this sort of thing since August ; the
bottom is quite knocked out of the market,
and — and — well, to tell you straight out,
what we want to know is how many you
have to offer?'

*' ' How many ! ' said Peter the Politician,
with a real annoyance unworthy of his
rank.

*' ' Yes,' said the suave and really important
Secretary Devil (for such he was), 'the fact
is, my Master says he can't quote for these
singly in the present state of the market, but
if you could bring a gross . . .*

'* At this Peter the Politician got up swear-
ing, and went out, forgetting to take his soul
with him, and leaving it there on the table all
tied up.

" And that is why some people go about
saying that he has lost his soul, for he cer-
tainly never sold it ; and this should teach
you that it is not easy to sell one's soul,
though it is exceedingly easy to lose it or
to give it away."

276 THE REPEATED TALE

The Poet {with great interest). " This is the
very first time I have heard this story 1 "

Myself. " It is not the fifteenth that I have
heard it. The first time I heard it was from
a Yankee, and he told it much quicker and
better than the Sailor.'*

The Sailor {angrily). "Then you may go
back to Yankeeland and hear it there I "

Myself. " Do not be angry, Sailor, you did
your best, and I learned several things I did
not know before. For instance, about that
calendar ; I never knew why the deaths of
great men were put down in calendars."

The Sailor {a little mollified). " Well, you
know now. And you also know that when
you want to sell your soul you will have to
make up a truck-load before you can get
reasonable rates."

ChizzlebearcL " I think the Sailor's story is
immoral."

The Poet, " I think so too, for he talks
in a flippant way about things which ought
to be talked of respectfully."

Grizzlebeard. "No, not on that account;
it is immoral because it makes out that souls

THE GREAT COUNCILS 277

are of different sizes and values. Now it is
well known that souls are exactly equal, and
that when you weigh them one against the
other they do not differ by a grain of sand,
and when you measure them there is not a
hundredth of an inch between two of them.
And that in value they are all precisely the
same. This has been laid down at no less
than 572 Synods, three Decisions of the Holy
Office, and one (Ecumenical Council."

The Sailor. " Yes, but not in the four first
Councils, and still less at Nicea, so that
stumps you I "

Grizzlebeard {solemnly). " Nicea be
damned ! "

Myself. " Very well, by all means, but not
Trent I hope, which is a very important one,
and to be quarrelled with only at a high risk."

" No," said Grizzlebeard, " not Trent, nor
Constance for that matter, though it troubles
me more."

Then we fell silent again. The grey
evening had advanced as we listened to the
Sailor's story, and it was growing cold. We

(1,665) T

278 FEASTING BEFORE DEATH

went through the half light and the gloam-
ing until it was upon the edge of darkness,
time for the evening meal. And we were
so weary with the many, many miles of that
day that we agreed together to sleep if it
were possible in the same place we might
eat at, that is, in the next inn. For we were
now near the end of all the road we had
to go, being but a mile or two from the
County border. And as we went we debated
our last feast and our last conversation, our
last songs, and our necessary farewells.

" My friends," said I, " all men before
death make a feast if they can. It is an
ancient custom, and one well approved by
time. Feast before battle if you can, and
before death which may come in battle. All
such death as comes to men in health, it is
well to feast before it. Now, with to-morrow
morning we shall come to the end of this
little journey of ours, all along the County, all
the way from end to end. Thus we shall
attain, as you may say, the death of our
good time. For it is agreed between us
that when we come to the Hampshire border

AND WHO SHALL PAY 279

we shall separate and see each other no
more."

The Sailor, " Yes, that is agreed."

Myself. " Well, then, let us make a feast."

The Poet. By all means, and who shall
pay?"

Grizzlebeard. "In general it is I that should
pay, for I am the richest. We have made no
feast in all these days, but since this is to be a
solemn sort of feast, and a kind of Passover
(for we are soon to pass over the boundary
into Hampshire), every man must give his
share."

Myself. " r am very willing, only if I do so,
I must call the food and drink."

The Sailor. " I am not willing at all, but
unwilling as I am, most certainly will I eat
nothing and drink nothing to which I am not
inclined."

The Poet. " In the matter of eating and
drinking 1 am with you all, but in the matter
of paying I differ from you altogether, for
I have nothing."

Myself. *• How is this. Poet ? It was only
to-day that I saw you with my own eyes at

280 FINANCE SOLVES ALL

the Bluebell paying for a mug of beer with
a labouring man."

The Poet " It was my last money, and I
did it for charity."

The Sailor. " Then now you may have the
reward of charity and starve."

Myself, " No, no, there is a way out of
these matters which is quite unknown to
children and to savages, but open to men
of intelligence and culture as are we. It is
to do things by way of paper instead of metal.
A fund shall be formed, each one shall pay
into the fund a piece of paper on which shall
be written, * I will meet one-quarter of the
bill,' and each man shall sign. When this is
done, one of us four shall be the financier,
and shall pay the bill. Then the paper will
be called in, and I will pay, and Grizzlebeard
will pay, and the Sailor will pay, but you,
the Poet, will not pay, and you will be
adjudicated bankrupt."

Grizzlebeard. " Yes, your principle is right
in the main, but I demur to the simplicity
of your last clause. I will not allow the
honest Poet to go bankrupt. I will buy up

OF EGGS AND BACON 281

his paper, and he shall be my slave for life,
and if I can so arrange it, his family for a
good time after as well."

The Poet. "I shall be delighted. Grizzle-
beard, and I will pay you my debt in songs."

Grizzlebeard. *' Not if I know it. You
will pay it in cash and at interest, and as
to how you shall earn it, that is your look-
out."

Myself. "Well, anyhow, it is determined
that we make a feast, and I say for my
part that there must be in this feast bacon
and eggs fried together in one pan, and
making a great commonalty in one dish."

The Sailor. "Excellent; and the drink
shall be beer."

The Poet. " Besides this, what we need is
two large cottage loaves of new bread, and
butter, and some kind of cheese."

Myself. " Poet, did you not tell me that
you were of this County and of this land ? "

The Poet. " I did."

Myself. " I think you lied. Who in
Sussex ever heard of ' some kind of cheese ' ?
You might as well talk in Hereford of

282 THAT CHEESE IS CHEESE

' some kind of cider,' or in Kent of * some
kind of foreigner ' coming over by their boats
from the foreign lands. I think you must
have been out of Sussex, Poet, for many
years of your life, and at the wrong time."

The Poet. " Why, that is true."

Myself. " And, undoubtedly, Poet, you
acquired in other counties a habit of eating
that Gorgonzola cheese, which is made of
soap in Connecticut ; and Stilton, which is
not made at Stilton ; and Camembert, and
other outlandish things. But in Sussex, let
me tell you, we have but one cheese, the
name of which is Cheese. It is One; and
undivided, though divided into a thousand
fragments, and unchanging, though changing
in place and consumption. There is in Sussex
no Cheese but Cheese, and it is the same true
Cheese from the head of the Eastern Rother
to Harting Hill, and from the sea-beach to
that part of Surrey which we gat from the
Marches with sword and with bow. In
colour it is yellow, which is the right colour
of Cheese. It is neither young nor old. Its
taste is that of Cheese, and nothing more. A

BUT PORT NOT PORT 283

man may live upon it all the days of his
life."

Grizzlebeai'd. "Well, then, there is to be
bacon and eggs and bread and cheese and
beer, and after that' "

Myself. " After that every man shall call
for his ow^n, and the Poet shall drink cold
water. But I will drink port, and if I taste
in it the jolly currant wine of my county,
black currants from the little bushes which I
know so well, then I shall give praise to
God. For I would rather drink that kind of
port which is all Sussex from vine to vat,
and brewed as the Sussex Men brew, than any
of your concoctions of the Portuguese, which
are but elderberry, liquorice, and boiled wine."

As we thus decided upon the nature of
the feast, the last of the light, long declined,
had faded upon the horizon behind the lattice-
work of bare branches. The air was pure and
cold, as befitted A 11- Hallows, and the far
edges of the Downs toward the Hampshire
border had level lines of light above them,
deeply coloured, full of departure and of rest.
There was a little mist upon the meadows of

284 THE OLD INN

the Rother, and a white line of it in the
growing darkness under the edges of the hills.
It was not yet quite dark, but the first stars
had come into the sky, and the pleasant scent
of the wood fires was already strong upon
the evening air when we found ourselves out-
side a large inn standing to the north of the
road, behind a sort of green recess or common.
Here were several carts standing out in the
open, and a man stood with a wagon and
a landaulette or two, and dogcarts as well,
drawn up in the great courtyard.

The lower rooms of this old inn were
brilliantly lighted. The small square panes
of it were shaded with red curtains, through
which that light came to us on our cold
evening way, and we heard the songs of
men within ; for there had been some sort
of sale, I think, which had drawn to this
place many of the farmers from around, and
some of the dealers and other smaller men.

So we found it when we knocked at the
door and were received. There was a pleasant
bar, and opening out of it a large room in
which some fifteen or twenty men, all hearty,

THE FEAST 285

some of them old, were assembled, and all
these were drinking and singing.

Their meal was long done, but we ordered
ours, which was of such excellence in the way
of eggs and bacon, as we had none of us
until that moment thought possible upon
this side of the grave. The cheese also, of
which I have spoken, was put before us, and
the new cottage loaves, so that this feast,
unlike any other feast that yet was since the
beginning of the world, exactly answered to
all that the heart had expected of it, and we
were contented and were filled.

Then we lit our pipes, and called each for
our own drink, I, for my black currant port,
and Grizzlebeard for brandy ; the Poet, at
the Sailor's expense, for beer, and the Sailor
himself for claret. Then, these before us,
we sat ourselves at the great table, and
saluted the company. But we were not
allowed to make more conversation before
an old man present there, sitting at the head
of the table, one with a small grey beard and
half-shut considering eyes, struck the board
very loudly with his fist, and cried " Golier " —

286 MASK CHARLES

which appeared to be a sort of symbol, for on
his saying this word, all the rest broke out
in chorus :

" And I will sing Golier !
Golier, Golier, Golier, Golier,
And I wiU sing Golier ! "

When this verse (which is the whole of
the poem) had been repeated some six times,
I knew myself indeed to be still in my own
County, and I was glad inside my heart, like
a man who hears the storm upon the win-
dows, but is himself safe houseled by the fire.
So did I know Hampshire to be stretching
waste a mile or two beyond, but here was I
safe among my own people by the token that
they were singing that ancient song " Golier."

When they had sung as many verses of
this, our national anthem, as they saw fit, a
young man called for " Mas'r Charles," and
from an extreme corner of the table there
came this answer :

"If so be as I do carl or be carled
upon. . . ."

But he did not finish it, for they all took
up very loudly the cry, " Mas'r Charles,

THE CALIFORNY SONG 287

Mas'r Charles," whereupon the very old man,
rising to his very old feet, put his very old
hands upon the table, bending forward, and
looking upwards with a quizzical face full of
years and expectation, said :

*' Arl I can sing were that song o' Calif orny,
that were sixty year ago," and he chuckled.
Then said another old man near by :

" Ar, there you do talk right, Mas'r Charles.
There were Hewlett's Field, what some called
Howlett's Field, which come to be called
* Calif orny ' in that same time when ..."
but the younger men who could not hear him
were calling out :

"Mas'r Charles, Mas'r Charles," until
silence was created again by the hammer of
the chairman's fist, who very solemnly called
upon Mas'r Charles, and Mas'r Charles in a
quavering voice gave us the ancient dirge :

" I am sailing for America
That far foreign strand,
And I whopes to set foot
In a fair fruitful land.

288 THE CALIFORNY SONG

But in the midst of the ocean
May grow the green apple tree
Avoor I prove faalse
To the girl that loves me.

The moon shall be in darkness.
And the stars give no light
But I'll roll you in my arms
On a cold frosty night.
And in the midst of the ocean
May grow the green apple tree."

Here the company, overcome by the melan-
choly of such things, joined all together in a
great moan :

" Avoor I prove faalse
To the girl that loves me."

This song so profoundly affected us all, and
particularly the Poet, that for some moments
we were not for another, when the Sailor
looking up in an abrupt fashion, said :

" Gentlemen, I will sing you a song, but
it is on condition you can join in the chorus."

To which the chairman far off at the end
of the table answered :

" Ar, Mister, if so be as we know it."

Then a younger man protested :

*' Nout but what we can arl on us sing it

THE LAST SONG 289

arter un," and this was the general opinion.
So when that fist at the end of the table had
performed its regular ritual, and when also
more beer had been brought as the occasion
demanded, the Sailor began to shout at the
top of his voice, and without undue melody,
this noble song, the chorus of which he parti-
cularly emphasised, so that it was readily
repeated by all our friends :

" Thou ugly, lowering, treacherous Quean
I think thou art the Devil !
To pull them down the rich and mean.
And bring them to one leveL
Of all my friends
That found their ends
By only following thee.
How many I tell
Already in Hell,
So shall it not be with me ! "

On hearing this last line they all banged
and roared heartily, and shouted in enormous
voices :

*• Zo zhaU ee not be,
Zo zhall ee not be,
Zo zhall ee not be wi' me ! "

which, by zealous repetition, they made a
chorus, and one old fellow that had his chin

290 THE LAST SONG

very nearly upon the table said, " Aye, marster I
But who be she ? "

" Why," said the Sailor, " She whom we
rail at in this song is that Spirit of getting-
on-ed-ness and making out our life at the
expense of our fellow men and of our own
souls.'*

" We mun arl get on ! If so be as can I "
said a young miller from down the valley.

"Yes," said the Sailor shortly, "but let
me tell you they overdo it in the towns. I
do not blame your way . . . and anyhow
the song must go on," whereat he began the
second verse :

" I knew three fellows were in yoxir thrall.

Got more than they could cany,
The first might drink no wine at all.

And the second he would not marry ;
The third in seeking golden earth

Was drownded in the sea,
Which taught him what your wage is worth,

So shall it not be with me ! "

And they all cried out as before :

" Zo zhall ee not be,
Zo zhall ee not be,
2k) zhall ee not be wi' me."

THE LAST SONG 291

Then the Sailor began again :

" There was Peter Bell of North Chappel,

Was over hard and sparing,
He spent no penny of all his many,

And died of over caring ;
He saved above two underd pound

But his widow spent it free,
And turned the town nigh upside down.

So shall it not be with me ! "

And again, but more zealously than before,
they gave him their chorus, for they all knew
North Chapel, and several wagged their
heads and laughed, and one more aged liar
said that he remembered the widow.

But the Sailor concluding sang, with more
voice than even he had given us in all those
days :

" Then mannikins bang the table roimd,
For the younger son o' the Squire,
Who never was blest of penny or pound,
But got his heart's desire.
Oh, the Creditors' curse
Might follow his hearse,
For all that it mattered to he !
They were easy to gammon
From worshipping Mammon,
So shaU it not be with me ! "

292 THE LAST CHORUS

And in one mighty chorus they all applauded
and befriended him, shouting :

" Zo zhall ee not be
Zo zhall ee not be
Zo zhall ee not be wi' me."

"Arl but that be main right I" said the
chief moneylender of that place, his eyes all
beaming; and indeed for the moment you
would have thought that not one of them
but had renounced the ambitions of this
world, while the Sailor hummed to himself
in a murmur :

"And Absalom,

That was a King's son.
Was hanged on a tree.

When he the Kingdom would have won.
So shall it not be with me ! "

The time had now come when the guests
must be going save those who were to sleep
in the house that night, and whose cattle
were stabled there. But when Grizzlebeard
and I asked the host apart whether there
were room for us, he said there was not, not
even in his barn where many would that night
lie upon the straw. But if we would pay our

THE LAST SLEEP 293

reckoning we might sleep (and he would give
us blankets and rugs for it) before that fire
in that room.

We told him we would be off early, we
paid our reckoning, and so for the third time
in those three nights we were to sleep once
more as men sleep in wars, but by this time
our bones were hardened to it.

And when the last man had gone his way
to bed or barn we were left with one candle,
and we made our camp as best
we could before the fire, and slept
the last sleep of that good
journeying.

(1>666

THE SECOND OF NOVEMBER

1902

THE SECOND OF NOVEMBER
1902

I WOKE sharply and suddenly from a dream
in that empty room. It was Grizzlebeard
that had put his hand upon my shoulder.
The late winter dawn was barely glimmer-
ing, and there was mist upon the heath
outside and rime upon the windows.

I woke and shuddered. For in my dream
I had come to a good place, the place inside
the mind, which is all made up of remem-
brance and of peace. Here I had seemed
to be in a high glade of beeches, standing

298 THE PLACE IN THE MIND

on soft, sweet grass on a slope very high
above the sea; the air was warm and the
sea was answering the sunlight, very far
below me. It was such a place as my own
Downs have made for me in my mind, but
the Downs transfigured, and the place was
full of glory and of content, height and
great measurement fit for the beatitude of
the soul. Nor had I in that dream any
memory of loss, but rather a complete end
of it, and I was surrounded, though I could
not see them, with the return of all those
things that had ever been my own. But
this was in the dream only; and when I
woke it was to the raw world and the
sad uncertain beginnings of a little winter
day.

Grizzlebeard, who had woken me, said
gravely :

** We must be up early. Let us waken
the others also, and take the road, for we
are near the end of our journey. We have
come to the term and boundary of this
short passage of ours, and of our brief com-
panionship, for we must reach the County

MY COMPANIONS RISE 299

border in these early hours. So awake, and
waken the others."

Then I woke the other two, who also
stirred and looked wearily at the thin, grey
light, but rose in their turn, and then I said
to Grizzlebeard :

" Shall we not eat before we start to the
place after which we shall not see each other
any more ? "

But he said, "No, we have but a little
way to go, and when we have gone that
little way together, we will break a crust
between us, and pledge each other if you
will, and then we shall never see each other
any more."

The others also said that this was the way
in which the matter should be accomplished.

Yielding to them, therefore (for I perceived
that they were greater than I), we went out
into the morning mist and walked through
it sturdily enough, but silent, the sounds of
our footsteps coming close into our ears,
blanketed and curtained by the fog. For a
mile and second mile and a third no one
of us spoke a word to another. But as I

300 WE BREAK BREAD

walked along I looked furtively first to one
side and then to the other, judging my com-
panions, whom chance had given me for these
few hours ; and it seemed to me (whether from
the mist or what not) that they were taller
than men ; and their eyes avoided my eyes.

When we had come to Treyford, Grizzle-
beard, who was by dumb assent at this
moment our leader, or at any rate certainly
mine, took that lane northward which turns
through Redlands and up to the hill of
Elstead and its inn. Then for the first
time he spoke and said :

"Here we will break a loaf, and pledge
each other for the last time."

Which we did, all sitting quite silent, and
then again we took the road, and went for-
ward as we had gone forward before, until
we came to Harting. And when we came
to Harting, just in the village street of it,
Grizzlebeard, going forward a little more
quickly, drew with him his two companions,
and they stood before me, barring the road
as it were, and looking at me kindly, but
halting my advance.

THEY WILL NOT STAY 301

1 said to them, a little afraid, " Do you
make for our parting now? We are not
yet come to the county border!"

But Grizzlebeard said (the others keeping
silent) : —

" Yes. As we met upon this side of the
county border, so shall we part before we
cross it. Nor shall you cross it with us.
But these my companions and I, when we
have crossed it must go each to our own
place: but you are perhaps more fortunate,
for you are not far from your home."

When he had said this, I was confused to
wonder from his voice and from the larger
aspect of himself and his companions, whether
indeed they were men.

"... And is there," I said, "in all the
county another such company of four; shall
I find even one companion like any of you ?
Now who is there to-day that can pour out
songs as you can at every hour and make up
the tunes as well ? And even if they could
so sing, would any such man or men be of one
faith with me ?

" Come back with me," I said, " along the

302 NOR LINGER WITH ME

crest of the Downs ; we will overlook to-
gether the groves at Lavington and the
steep at Bury Combe, and then we will
turn south and reach a house I know of
upon the shingle, upon the tide, near where
the Roman palaces are drowned beneath the
Owers ; and to-night once more, and if you
will for the last time, by another fire we
will sing yet louder songs, and mix them
with the noise of the sea."

But Grizzlebeard would not even linger. He
looked at me with a dreadful solemnity and said :

'* No ; we are all three called to other
things. But do you go back to your home,
for the journey is done."

Then he added (but in another voice);
" There is nothing at all that remains : nor
any house ; nor any castle, however strong ;
nor any love, however tender and sound;
nor any comradeship among men, however
hardy. Nothing remains but the things of
which 1 will not speak, because we have
spoken enough of them already during these
four days. But I who am old will give you
advice, which is this — to consider chiefly from

FOR ALL THINGS END 303

now onward those permanent things which
are, as it were, the shores of this age and
the harbours of our gHttering and pleasant
but dangerous and wholly changeful sea."

When he had said this (by which he meant
Death), the other two, looking sadly at me,
stood silent also for about the time in which
a man can say good-bye with reverence. Then
they all three turned about and went rapidly
and with a purpose up the village street.

I watched them, straining my sad eyes, but
in a moment the mist received them and they
had disappeared.

• • • • • •

I went up in gloom, by the nearest spur,
on to the grass and into the loneliness of the
high Downs that are my brothers and my
repose ; and, once upon their crest, setting
my face eastward I walked on in a fever for
many hours back towards the places from
which we had come ; and below me as I went
was that good landscape in which I had passed
such rare and memorable hours.

I still went on, through little spinnies here
and there, and across the great wave tops and

804 I FOLLOW THE CREST

rolls of the hills, and as the day proceeded
and the Hght declined about me I still went
on, now dipping into the gaps where tracks
and roads ran over the chain, now passing for
a little space into tall and silent woods wher-
ever these might stand. And all the while
I came nearer and nearer to an appointed spot
of which a memory had been fixed for years
in my mind. But as I strode, with such a
goal in view, an increasing loneliness oppressed
me, and the air of loss and the echo of those
profound thoughts which had filled the last
words we four had exchanged together.

It was in the grove above Lavington, near
the mounds where they say old kings are
buried, that I, still following the crest of my
hills, felt the full culmination of all the twenty
tides of mutability which had thus run to-
gether to make a skerry in my soul. I saw
and apprehended, as a man sees or touches a
physical thing, that nothing of our sort
remains, and that even before my county
should cease to be itself I should have left
it. I recognised that I was (and 1 confessed)
in that attitude of the mind wherein men

OF THE DOWNS ALONE 305

admit mortality; something had already
passed from me — I mean that fresh and
vigorous morning of the eyes wherein the
beauty of this land had been reflected as in
a tiny mirror of burnished silver. Youth was
gone out apart ; it was loved and regretted,
and therefore no longer possessed.

Then, as I walked through this wood more
slowly, pushing before me great billows of
dead leaves, as the bows of a ship push the
dark water before them, this side and that,
when the wind blows full on the middle of
the sail and the water answers loudly as the
ship sails on, so I went till suddenly I remem-
bered with the pang that catches men at the
clang of bells what this time was in Novem-
ber ; it was the Day of the Dead. All that
day I had so moved and thought alone and
fasting, and now the light was falling. I had
consumed the day in that deep wandering on
the heights alone, and now it was evening.
Just at that moment of memory I looked up
and saw that I was there. I had come upon
that lawn which I had fixed for all these
hours to be my goal.

It is the great platform just over Barl'ton,

806 THE EVENING GATHERS

whence all the world lies out before one. East-
ward into the night for fifty miles stretched
on the wall of the Downs, and it stretched
westward towards the coloured sky where a
full but transfigured daylight still remained.
Southward was the belt of the sea, very broad,
as it is from these bare heights, and absolutely
still ; nor did any animal move in the brush-
wood near me to insult the majesty of that
silence. Northward before me and far below
swept the Weald.

The haze had gone ; the sky was faint and
wintry, but pure throughout its circle, and
above the Channel hung largely the round of
the moon, still pale, because the dark had not
yet come.

But though she had been worshipped so
often upon such evenings and from such a
place, a greater thing now moved and took
me from her, and turning round I looked
north from the ridge of the steep escarpment
over the plain to the rivers and the roofs
of the Weald. I would have blessed them
had I known some form of word or spell which
might convey an active benediction, but as I

OVER ALL THE WEALD 307

knew none such, I repeated instead the list of
their names to serve in place of a prayer.

The river A run, a valley of sacred water;
and Amberley Wild brook, which is lonely
with reeds at evening ; and Burton Great
House, where I had spent nights in November ;
and Lavington also and Hidden Byworth ;
and Fittleworth next on, and Egdean Side, all
heath and air ; and the lake and the pine trees
at the mill ; and Petworth, little town.

All the land which is knit in with our flesh,
and yet in which a man cannot find an acre
nor a wall of his own.

I knew as this affection urged me that verse
alone would satisfy something at least of that
irremediable desire. I lay down therefore at
full length upon the short grass which the
sheep also love, and taking out a little stump
of pencil that I had, and tearing off the back
of a letter, I held my words prepared

My metre, which at first eluded me (though
it had been with me in a way for many hours)
was given me by these chance lines that came :

"... and therefore even youth that dies
May leave of right its legacies."

308 A PIECE OF VERSE

I put my pencil upon the paper, doubtfully,
and drew little lines, considering my theme.
But I would not long hesitate in this manner,
for I knew that all creation must be chaos
first, and then gestures in the void before it
can cast out the completed thing. So I put
down in fragments this line and that ; and
thinking first of how many children below
me upon that large and fruitful floor were
but entering what I must perforce abandon,
I wrote down :

"... and of mine opulence I leave
To every Sussex girl and boy
My lot in universal joy."

Having written this down, I knew clearly
what was in my mind.

The way in which our land and we mix up
together and are part of the same thing
sustained me, and led on the separate parts
of my growing poem towards me ; introducing
them one by one ; till at last I wrote down
this further line :

" One with our random fields we grow."

And since I could not for the moment fill in

IS WRITTEN AND 309

the middle of the verse, I wrote the end,
which was already fashioned :

"... because of lineage and because
The soil and memories out of mind
Embranch and broaden all mankind."

Ah ! but if a man is part of and is rooted
in one steadfast piece of earth, which has
nourished him and given him his being, and
if he can on his side lend it glory and do it
service (I thought), it will be a friend to him
for ever, and he has outflanked Death in a way.

" And I shall pass " (thought 1), " but this shall stand
Almost as long as No-Man's Land."

" No, certainly," I answered to myself aloud,
" he does not die ! " Then from that phrase
there ran the fugue, and my last stanzas stood
out clear at once, complete and full, and I
wrote them down as rapidly as writing can go.

" He does not die " (I wrote) " that can bequeath
Some influence to the land he knows.
Or dares, persistent, interwreath
Love permanent with the wild hedgerows ;
He does not die, but still remains
Substantiate with his darling plains.

(1,600) ^

810 I COME TO MY HOME

" The spring's superb adventure calls

His dust athwart the woods to flame ;

His boundary river's secret falls

Perpetuate and repeat his name.

He rides his loud October sky :
He does not die. He does not die.

" The beeches know the accustomed head

Which loved them, and a peopled air

Beneath their benediction spread

Comforts the silence everywhere ;

'For native ghosts return and these
Perfect the mystery in the trees.

" So, therefore, though myself be crosst
The shuddering of that dreadful day
When friend and fire and home are lost
And even children drawn away —

The passer-by shall hear me still ,
A boy that sings on Duncton Hill."

Full of these thoughts and greatly relieved
by their metrical expression, I went, through
the gathering darkness, southward across the
Downs to my home.

FINIS

NUV 18 i^oH

University of Calltornte -^

SOUTHERN REGIoflAL LIBR^^^^

from Which it was borrowed.

A 000 560 773 4